Emmerson makes second Tennant Creek discovery
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Tennant Creek-focused gold-copper explorer Emmerson Resources has discovered its second high-grade copper deposit.
This new discovery called Goanna is located within its 100 per cent-owned Tennant Creek Mineral Field leases in the Northern Territory.
It also lies within, what Emmerson describes as the “highly prospective” Gecko Structural Corridor.
The discovery of Goanna follows in the tracks of the company’s announcement of its discovery at Monitor, which it announced in August.
Drilling at the Goanna project has intersected high-grade copper including:
– 21 metres at 2.63 per cent copper from 297 metres down hole, including 12 metres at 3.89 per cent copper from 299 metres, or 7 metres at 4.96 per cent copper from 299 metres.
Earlier this year, Emmerson flew the world’s most powerful helicopter (HeliTEM) geophysical survey over five discrete blocks within its 3,000 square kilometre project.
“The high-grade copper discovery at Goanna, our second significant copper discovery in a month, shows the value and importance of the HeliTEM survey in more directly pinpointing mineralisation that contains sulphides, in this instance, high grade copper sulphides,” Emmerson Resources managing director Rob Bills said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“The Goanna and Monitor discoveries have important implications to the exploration potential of the rest of the field, as the style and signature of these discoveries are very different to the historic ironstone hosted deposits.
“Thus HeliTEM has provided some new insights into the TCMF and has the potential to unlock a new generation of sulphide rich deposits within our project area.
“Importantly we believe there is excellent potential to intersect gold mineralisation beneath or peripheral to these identified copper zones, as the majority of deposits within the TCMF have gold mineralisation below the copper zones and; that the drilling at both these projects intersected high grade bismuth mineralisation which is typically a pathfinder element to the gold.”
Emmerson originally identified Goanna from a series of HeliTEM anomalies within the Gecko Structural Corridor.
A combination of additional ground geophysics, mainly Induced Polarisation, and new geological and structural concepts indicated potential outside of the traditional magnetic targets.
Mineralisation at Goanna is around 200m east of the known mineralisation, remains open in all directions.
Emmerson considers the Monitor project to represent a totally new ore position within the Gecko Structural Corridor.
A previously reported drill hole at the Monitor project, located around 2km to the west of Goanna suggests a similar style of mineralisation was overlooked by previous exploration companies.
“We now believe these shear zones extend well beyond the Gecko mine area and that their relationship to the HeliTEM anomalies, which are developed over some six kilometres along the Gecko corridor, indicate excellent potential for additional discoveries,” Emmerson said in its announcement.