S2 Resources Shifting Focus from Polar Bear to Sweden
THE INSIDE STORY: S2 Resources (ASX: S2R) is continuing to make inroads with its exploration programs across its portfolio of both domestic and international projects.
S2 Resources owns 100 per cent of the Polar Bear gold project in Western Australia, which covers the southern continuation of the ultramafic stratigraphy that hosts the Kambalda and Widgiemooltha nickel deposits.
It is largely concealed beneath the salt-lake sediments and sand dunes of Lake Cowan and takes in approximately 130 square kilometres of underexplored ground located between the two, 10 million-ounce, world-class gold producing centres of St Ives and Norseman, and southeast of the two million ounce Higginsville gold operations of Westgold.
S2 Resources’ main target at Polar Bear is the Baloo gold deposit where the company recently announced an upgrade to the Mineral Resource estimate.
Towards the end of 2016, S2 completed a drilling campaign at Baloo down dip of the known Resource that identified further mineralisation over a strike length of at least 250 metres at depths of 100 to 200 metres below previous drilling and below the limits of the Baloo Mineral Resource estimate.
“The new surface Resources appears to have the potential for a good open-pit, but at this stage we’re just trying to follow the scent down dip and down plunge at Baloo to see where it takes us,” S2 Resources managing director Mark Bennett told The Resources Roadhouse.
“We’re not far from Higginsville where Avoca had some success doing a similar thing in chasing the trail of historic gold intercepts, which led it to the Trident and Athena deposits.”
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Better results from the drilling included:
SPBD0351
6m at 2.23 grams per tonne gold from 263m and 8.4m at 1.63 g/t gold from 282m, located 130m down dip of previous drilling and 120m down dip of the limit of the Baloo resource;
SPBD0353
3.15m at 3.45g/t gold from 303.15m, located 80m south and down plunge of hole SPBD0351;
SPBD0352
7m at 2.36g/t gold from 369m and 5.45m at 3.3g/t gold from 378.75m, located 100m south and down plunge of hole SPBD0351
SPBD0349
11.9m at 1.3g/t gold from 399m, 0.9m at 44.1g/t gold from 413.75m, and 0.75m at 2.21g/t gold from 416m, located 45m south and down plunge of hole SPBD0352, and also 225m down dip of previous drilling and 130m down dip of the limit of the Baloo resource.
The results enabled the company to re-estimate the Indicated and Inferred Baloo Mineral Resource of 4.22 million tonnes grading 2 grams per tonne gold for a contained 264,000 ounces of gold at a lower cut-off grade of 0.8g/t gold.
This is a 115 per cent increase in contained gold from the previous resource estimate at the same lower cut-off grade, most of which comprises Inferred category material due to the broad spacing of the drilling.
Importantly, the deepest drilling identified a relatively thick, consistent zone of mineralisation dipping steeply to the east and plunging moderately to the south up to around 14m true thickness, which is open both down dip and down plunge beneath the drilling limits.
These results are encouraging; however, S2 Resources does find it hard to ignore the potential of its Skellefte project in northern Sweden.
Skellefte is in an established mining district that contains numerous major polymetallic zinc-copper-gold-silver volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposits.
In an area that also host the mining and smelting operations of local hero Boliden, S2 has approximately 551 square kilometres of ground, which it considers highly-prospective for similar polymetallic VMS mineralization and orogenic shear zone hosted lode gold mineralisation.
The company’s confidence in the Skellefte project stems from the inordinate number of targets it has to choose from.
S2’s first VTEM geophysical survey – the first ever undertaken over the historic 100-year old mining region – identified 64 EM conductors.
S2 has since increased this number with the identification of more than 40 new EM conductors by a second VTEM survey flown on ground the company has acquired since the first survey was undertaken.
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Recent drilling carried out on the Svan Vit prospect intersected several narrow zones, measuring 10 to 30 centimetres, of sphalerite (zinc sulphide) mineralisation predicted by a down hole electromagnetic (DHEM)survey carried out undertaken in 2016.
Holes SSVT170005 and SSVT170006 were drilled into the upper part of a downhole EM (DHEM) conductor, approximately 25m west along strike from previous drilling.
The drill rig has now moved to the Bjurtraskgruvan prospect, which came to the company’s attention late last year.
Bjurtraskgruvan comprises outcropping massive sulphide mineralisation and has recorded mineralised intercepts in limited historical drilling.
The prospect is coincident with one of the new EM anomalies (Vargfors 401-4) identified in the recent VTEM survey.
S2 has collected ten rock-chip and float samples from this outcrop that have all been enriched in either zinc or copper-gold-silver.
Three samples graded at 2.68 per cent to 6.47 per cent zinc, with negligible copper, gold or silver, while the other seven samples graded at 4.71 per cent to 13.25 per cent copper, 0.26g/t to 6.74g/t gold and 30g/t to 95g/t silver, with negligible zinc.
A second phase of ground-based moving loop electromagnetic (MLEM) surveying at Bjurtraskgruvan extended the previously identified conductor some 200m along strike and 200m down plunge to the southwest beyond existing drilling.
Assay results from base of till (BOT) sampling located 150m to the west of the Bjurtraskgruvan gossan also identified a strong geochemical anomaly beneath cover along strike from the known outcropping volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) mineralisation.
The peak of the BOT anomaly comprises strongly anomalous silver (15.4g/t) with elevated lead (0.14%) and zinc (413ppm) concentrations.
An initial three holes have been planned to test the extended EM anomaly down plunge from known mineralisation and beneath the BOT anomaly.
“Polar Bear will probably not receive as much attention as it deserves in the short term as our main short-term focus will be centred on Sweden and the large number of drilling targets we have created there,” Bennett said.
“We expect to be very busy in Sweden between now and Easter, which means most of our exploration team who would normally be at Polar Bear will be up there to ensure we test as many targets as possible.
“Having generated so many targets through our VTEM surveys, there is really no way of discerning which target may be better than another, so it really is a process of drilling each one as quickly as possible to see what we can find.
“Having said that, it would be great if we were to find something big with target number ten rather than having to wait until target number 90.”
S2 Resources (ASX; S2R)
…The Short Story
HEAD OFFICE
North Wing, Level 2
1 Manning Street
Scarborough WA 6019
Ph: +61 8 6166 0240
Email: admin@s2resources.com.au
Web: www.s2resources.com.au
DIRECTORS
Jeff Dowling, Mark Bennett, Anna Neuling, Grey Egerton Warburton.