Impact Minerals Identifies New Gold Trends
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Impact Minerals (ASX: IPT) has identified two new five-kilometre-long trends within the company’s 100 per cent-owned Commonwealth project north of Orange in New South Wales.
Impact Minerals considers the trends to be prospective for further discoveries of high-grade gold-silver-base metal mineralisation similar to that discovered at Commonwealth-Silica Hill.
“The prospective trends have been recognised as significant following the identification in new drill assay data of extensive barium as an important pathfinder and indicator element directly associated with the Commonwealth-Silica Hill mineralisation,” Impact Minerals said in its ASX announcement.
“This has led to a new interpretation of the barium results from both Impact’s soil geochemistry database and also the Geological Survey of New South Wales regional stream sediment geochemistry database.”
Impact Minerals explained the importance of the presence of barium due to it being an accessory element that can be used as a vector to, and direct indicator of, ore in gold-rich VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) deposits such as Eskay Creek in Canada.
Impact believes the work it has completed at Commonwealth-Silica Hill has demonstrated similarities to the Canadian mineralisation.
Drilling completed by Impact in 2016 returned a high-grade seven-metre-thick intercept of massive sulphide.
Recent petrographic work on the intercept identified barite as a component of the mineralisation and accordingly Impact re-submitted the samplessubmitted for assay.
“Barium mostly occurs as barite (barium sulphate) which is very resistive and which requires an (expensive) XRF fusion assay to accurately determine the quantity present,” Impact explained.
“There is a strong correlation between high-grade gold and high-grade barium.
“Sporadic assays from drill holes completed by previous explorers also indicate high-grade barium in places and it is clearly present throughout the massive sulphide mineralisation.
“It is also a minor component in the surrounding disseminated mineralisation and also within the high-grade gold-silver mineralisation at Silica Hill.
“The recognition of extensive barite intimately associated with ore is a further compelling similarity between Commonwealth-Silica Hill and Eskay Creek as well as the nature of the host rock, the style of mineralisation, the contained commodity and pathfinder metals and the high grades of individual units and veins of commodity metals.”
Email: info@impactminerals.com.au
Website: www.impactminerals.com.au