Musgrave Minerals Recommenced Mainland Drilling After Hitting More High-Grade Lena Gold
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Musgrave Minerals (ASX: MGV) has recommenced drilling at the Mainland area, part of the company’s 100 per cent-owned tenure at the Cue gold project in the Murchison district of Western Australia.
Musgrave Minerals reported the drilling at Mainland had recommenced to follow-up high-grade gold drill results that were achieved in August and surface high-grade rock-chip sampling in October.
The company executed an Option Agreement to acquire the Mainland tenements near Cue in March, after which it quickly completed an initial Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling program at the Mainland-Consols target that intersected:
3m @ 5.4g/t Au from 74m down hole (19MORC008)
The Mainland-Consols target is open to the south and down dip and follow-up drilling that has commenced is aimed at further testing this area along with other high-priority targets including the area where a high-grade (3,499.4g/t gold) rock-chip sample was identified.
Musgrave indicated that there has been no historical drilling carried out in the area of this high-grade rock-chip sample.
“We are excited to recommence drilling at Mainland in areas where we have previously identified high-grade gold,” Musgrave Minerals managing director Rob Waugh said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“There is significant untested gold potential within the Mainland tenements and we are only just getting started in terms of applying modern exploration techniques in the area.”
The current program will consist of up to 18 RC drill holes for approximately 1,000m before the rig moves to Break of Day and Lena.
Musgrave also received further high-grade gold assay results from diamond drilling at the Lena deposit that returned high-grade gold over potentially mineable widths below the current JORC resource boundary and confirm the continuity of the mineralisation at depth.
Lena has an existing JORC 2012 resource of 2,682,000 tonnes at 1.77 grams per tonne gold for 153,000 ounces of gold.
Two of the three recent diamond drill holes completed at Lena (19MODD020 and 19MODD021) intersected high-grade gold lodes over potentially minable widths.
Results include:
19MODD021
6 metres at 4.4 grams per tonne gold from 191m down hole, including 2.2m at 10.6g/t gold from 194.8m
This intersection was encountered approximately 30m vertically beneath the existing resource boundary on the eastern high-grade lode; and
19MODD020
2.8m at 4.8g/t gold from 384m down hole, 140m below the existing resource on the western lode.
The mineralisation is open down plunge on all lodes.
Musgrave explained that hole 16MODD019 that was drilled at the southern end of the high-grade plunging main shoot at Lena, lifted above the intended target position and intersected the lode above and outside the south plunging high-grade shoot at this location without intersecting any mineralisation of note.
That being said, the company acknowledged the new drilling had supported its re-interpretation of historical drill data that identified a southerly plunge on the high-grade gold lodes that remain open at depth below the current JORC resource boundary.
Musgrave has been encouraged by the drilling program, saying it has improved its geological confidence in the continuity of the mineralisation beneath the current resource.
The results will be incorporated into the geological model to facilitate a re-estimation of the Lena gold resource.
Further RC drilling is scheduled to commence at Lena in early November to support an updated JORC compliant resource estimate in early Q1 2020.
“At Lena we continue to define high-grade extensions to the gold mineralisation below the existing JORC resource boundary,” Waugh continued.
“The drilling has improved our confidence in the continuity of the high-grade mineralisation at depth and will likely add high-grade ounces as we continue to drill to upgrade the existing resource at Lena.”
The Mainland area and Lena deposit are 100 per cent-owned by Musgrave and are excluded from the Earn-in and Exploration Joint Venture with Evolution Mining (ASX: EVN).
On the new JV area over Lake Austin at Cue, Musgrave and Evolution are planning follow-up drilling programs at Lake Austin North and other lake targets where there is evidence of a potential large gold system.
Email: info@musgraveminerals.com.au
Web: www.musgraveminerals.com.au