Crescent Gold announces probable 54k ounce gold reserve
THE DRILL SERGEANT: ASX-listed gold play Crescent Gold has announced a maiden probable gold reserve of 54,000 ounces near surface at its newly acquired Apollo Deposit in Laverton, Western Australia.
New drilling results and resource modelling carried out by Crescent confirmed the probable gold reserve of 770,000 tonnes and at average grade of 2.2 grams per tonne gold at the Apollo deposit, located less than 10 kilometres southwest of Laverton.
The company acquired the project last year from former owners, Barrick Gold and Carbon Energy.
All of the reserve at Apollo is located within 75 metres of surface and is extractable by open pit mining methods.
Subject to approvals, Crescent is hopeful of commencing mining at the Apollo deposit during the coming September quarter.
“The deposit is the most western deposit yet identified for mining by Crescent at Laverton and will supplement the company’s existing gold production from a number of Laverton pits, including Craiggiemore, Mary Mac South and North, Fish, and Pieces of Eight, all located to the east, northeast and southeast of Apollo,” Crescent Gold said in an announcement.
“The new reserve milestone is contained in an upgraded JORC-compliant Measured, Indicated and Inferred ounce resource upgrade for Apollo that is 59% higher in ounces than previous.
“The new resources stand at 2.47 million tonnes for a contained 179,000 ounces at an average grade of 2.2 grams per tonne gold, using a 0.8 grams per tonne cut off.”
Crescent said the new resource estimate compares to the most recent previous resource estimate for Apollo from June last year under the project’s previous ownership of an Inferred-only resource of 1.4 million tonnes at 2.4 g/t gold for 109,000 ounces using a 1.0 g/t cut off.
The resource upgrade, including the maiden Reserve estimate, follows more than 10,500 metres of Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling and 604 metres of diamond core drilling, undertaken across the acquired western tenements by Crescent, since acquisition, between mid-2010 and the end of the March quarter this year.
Permitting of the Apollo deposit with the Department of Mines and Petroleum of Western Australia is now underway.
Waste characterisation studies have been completed, and other studies advanced. Results from a stage of trial mining in 2005, indicate a metallurgical recovery of 94%.
Crescent plans to commence during June reserve definition work on the Eclipse and Calypso deposits, both north of Apollo, and anticipates processing the ore from Apollo at the nearby Granny Smith plant where the Company has an ore purchase agreement with Barrick Gold Corporation.