Highlands Pacific hits highest grade copper in final Olgal prospect drilling hole

THE DRILL SERGEANT: Highlands Pacific has reported the final assays it has received from a 14 hole diamond drilling program at its Olgal prospect in the Star Mountains, located 20 kilometres northeast of the Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea.

 

Star Mountains prospects and Olgal drilling. Source: Company announcement

The company was made to wait until assaying of the bottom of the final hole of the 14 hole program to receive the best results, which included:

596 metre at 0.61 per cent copper and 0.85 grams per tonne gold from 24m down hole (at a 0.2 per cent copper cut‐off), including 294 metres at 0.67 per cent copper and 1.16 grams per tonne gold from 320 metres down hole (at a 0.5 per cent copper cut‐off).

“This hole is quite a surprise and the grade exceptional and more than justifies the effort and resources that we have expended at Star Mountains in the last two years,” Highlands Pacific managing director John Gooding said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“There is no doubt that this is a new copper gold porphyry province close to the established infrastructure of the Ok Tedi Mine.

“Importantly, with each hole we are increasing our conceptual understanding of the area and the interplay between the more than a dozen targets we have in mind to test.

“Drilling at Olgal has stopped for now with the rigs now located at the Futik and Pad48 prospects.

“Based on the Olgal results, we look forward to results from these and the next drill target at Rattatat in the coming months.”

Of the 14 holes drilled in the recent program at Olgal, 12 have encountered copper and gold mineralisation.