Manas hits bonanza gold intercept
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Perth-based gold exploration and development company Manas Resources had a smile on its collective faces as it reported the second round of results from a drilling campaign at its 100%- owned Shambesai gold project in the Kyrgyz Republic, Central Asia.
The company has been carrying out a program of more than 12,000 metres of resource and development drilling at Shambesai with the aim of rapidly upgrading all resources in the current pit optimisation.
The drilling was also designed to test other areas for further shallow oxide at the edge of the existing resource; Test the fault zone between the deep and main Shambesai zones; and Define the zone at the western boundary of the current pit with the goal of substantially increasing the resource and pit extent.
The highlight result from this current drilling was a wide, high-grade intersection, from outside of the current Shambesai Mineral Resource of:
– 33.7 metres at 10.74 grams per tonne gold from 114.3m.
Other high-grade zones were found to occur within this intersection and included intercepts of:
– 15.8m at 17.81g/t gold from 125m;
– 7.8m at 28.64g/t gold from 133m; and
– 4m at 42.03g/t gold from 136m.
Other significant results from the recent drilling program included:
-13.9m at 1.78g/t gold from 104m;
– 17.45m at 2.55g/t gold from 14.75m; and
– 5.1m at 4.49g/t gold from 59m.
Manas Resources said it considered all of these results to demonstrate the mineralisation to continue at depth as well as demonstrating continuity of the mineralisation on the contact between the limestone and siltstone.
“The wide high-grade intersection…was returned from sulphides in the structural zone separating the Shambesai main and west zones,” Manas Resources said in its ASX announcement.
“The discovery of high-grade mineralisation along this structural zone has the potential to significantly improve the already robust project economics by substantially increasing the underground potential of the project which Manas has recently begun to evaluate.”
The majority of this latest round of Shambesai results were returned from sulphide mineralisation outside of the Shambesai project’s current 645,000-ounce Mineral Resource.
Manas is currently in the process of carrying out further drilling to test the extent of high-grade mineralisation along the Shambesai structural zone and to the west of the structural zone.
The aim of the current drilling program is to increase gold resources and provide additional mineable oxide for the Shambesai gold project.
Drilling is currently occurring at two areas – Shambesai and Pum – with 11,000 metres completed on all areas.