In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the notable drill intersections revealed on the ASX, including Elevate Uranium’s 2m strike running a grade of 1482 parts per million uranium oxide at its Hirabeb prospect in Namibia.
We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week as reported by Dateline Resources from its Colosseum gold-rare earths project in California and New World Resources at its Antler copper play in Arizona.
So, let’s dive in.
Koppies uranium project – Namibia
Hit: 2m at 1482ppm uranium oxide from 4.5m.
Elevate’s headline high-grade reverse-circulation (RC) drill intercept is included in a 6m run averaging 797ppm uranium oxide from just 4.5m depth. The hole is the best of 10 selected from the company’s latest round of drilling, which features notable intercepts exceeding 100ppm uranium oxide.
By mid-July, management had put in 1278 RC holes for 34,892m at both its Koppies resource and Hirabeb prospects area. It says its initial Hirabeb program achieved “excellent results” from the single drill rig working on a phased program of greenfield exploration and follow-up infill drilling in a bid to generate a maiden resource estimate later in the year.
Earlier phase-one results from Hirabeb include 15.5m at 599ppm uranium oxide, 12m at 451ppm, 7.5m at 616ppm and 4m at 1198ppm.
The latest Hirabeb drilling has focused on a 4.5km-long mineralised strike of the south-central area of the Hirabeb tenement, with 60 holes drilled for 1334m since the company’s July announcement. Management says 40 of those drillholes jagged intercepts ranging between 0.5m and 3.5m, all averaging better than 100ppm uranium oxide.
Significantly, all Hirabeb mineralisation encountered to date is shallow, with all of the main intercepts beginning within 10m of the surface.
Hirabeb encloses an area of 545 square kilometres, about 15-times the area of the Koppies ground, and Elevate says it could “potentially become a satellite project to supply any future operation”.
The total mapped area of palaeochannels in Hirabeb is also vastly greater than that enclosed by the Koppies tenements and while it remains mostly untested, it is beckoning with vast resource potential – possibly capable of surpassing the Koppies resource tonnage.
Following the completion of its inferred resource drilling program in mid-March, Elevate updated its Koppies inferred mineral resource in April to a JORC-compliant 134.6 million tonnes for 57.8 million pounds of uranium oxide. About 95 per cent of the total mineral resource at Koppies lies within 18.5m of the surface, while 50 per cent sits within a mere 7m of the surface, making the deposit one of the shallowest big uranium resources globally.
Such characteristics point to economically-favourable low strip ratios and low-cost mining at Koppies.
By January last year, the company had concluded that all four zones of its Koppies mineralisation were interconnected for an aggregate length of 20km. And notably, 38 per cent of the high-grade intervals – those above 1000ppm uranium oxide – are contained within the basement lithology, suggesting that mineralisation could extend deeper into that basement host.
Elevate now sees several new opportunities and potential rewards to be gained by re-testing earlier shallow-drilled sites at Hirabeb. Its latest interpretation from exploration data has identified four new exploration target areas warranting further investigation.
Hirabeb is now looking more like Koppies in that its mineralisation is not simply confined within palaeochannels, but also extends into basement lithologies. It indicates the opportunity for growth of the mineralised areas at both Koppies and Hirabeb.
Metallurgical testwork samples are to be dispatched from Koppies to a Perth laboratory for a detailed metallurgical testwork program utilising the company’s proprietary “U-pgrade” beneficiation process, with the data to contribute to technical studies and pilot plant design.
Hirabeb drilling is expected to continue for the rest of the year as Elevate works towards defining and estimating a resource upgrade to the indicated category.
Colosseum gold project – California, United States
Hit: 203.6m at 1.03 grams per tonne gold
This whopping hit was intercepted in one of two diamond holes drilled into Dateline’s North Pipe target at its Colosseum Mine, which is located in the Walker Lane Trend in California’s East San Bernardino County.
The two holes are the first to be drilled by the company into North Pipe and were designed to test for extensions of the mineralised zone and to verify results of historical drilling undertaken in the late 1980s before mine development.
The headline intercept was drilled in a felsite breccia host rock about 30m to the south of a second hole, terminating at 205.1m and producing the impressive 203.6m run at an average grade of 1.03g/t gold that included a high-grade section of 10.7m going 8.17g/t.
Overall, it intercepted the same lithologies as previous holes, but with increased feldspathic alteration in segments that carried up to 33.4g/t gold. The second hole was also drilled in felsite breccia host rock to a depth of 317m below the bottom of the north pit bench and returned an intercept of 192m averaging 1g/t gold.
When the Colosseum mine was operational in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the main focus had been on the South Pipe, with only a relatively shallow pit developed at North Pipe. At the time of closure in 1993, mining was suspended at the North Pipe, leaving significant gold mineralisation in the floor of the pit.
The broad, pipe-like mineralisation style is considered to capable of being mined by either open pit or bulk underground methods, both of which are being investigated by the company.
The grades intersected in Dateline’s two latest drillholes are generally higher than grades assumed in the block model for the mineral resource estimate, which were based on historical holes drilled in the 1980s.
The results of the drilling at the North Pipe will be used to update its existing mineral resource estimate that contains 603,000 ounces of the total 1.1 million ounces at Colosseum.
The updated mineral resource estimate will form the basis for a scoping study that is already underway, assessing the potential for both open pit and underground developments and will also be used in mine planning.
Dateline is the outright owner of the Colosseum gold-rare earths project.
Antler copper project – Arizona, US
Hit: 8m at 5.9 per cent copper from 402m
New World has two diamond-core rigs drilling at its Antler copper project, which is about 290km north-west of Arizona’s capital city of Phoenix.
The company recently received assay results for a further four ore reserves definition drillholes, two of which carry what it reports as “some of the highest-grade mineralisation ever intersected at the Antler Deposit”. Both holes were put into relatively shallow depths, about 340m vertically below surface, to further test mineralisation at the northern end of the target’s Main Shoot.
One of the holes delivered the headline hit of 8m at 5.9 per cent copper from 402m, which also includes 7.6 per cent zinc, 0.6 per cent lead, 37.3g/t silver and 0.46g/t gold for a copper equivalent grade of 8m at 8.3 per cent. Its neighbour was put in about 60m up-dip and 40m further south, intercepting 2.5m going 10 per cent copper, 4.2 per cent zinc, 1.1 per cent lead, 55.5g/t silver and 0.99g/t gold from 367m for a copper equivalent grade of 2.5m at 11.8 per cent.
The object of the drilling program was primarily to expand the existing JORC-compliant 11.4 million-tonne Antler mineral resource that carries average grades of 2.1 per cent copper, 4.97 per cent zinc, 0.89 per cent lead, 32.9g/t silver and 0.36g/t gold for an overall copper equivalent grade of 4.1 per cent in inferred and indicated resource categories.
Assay results have also been returned for two other holes that were drilled to better define the upper portions of the South Shoot and which have both produced respectable high-grade mineralisation. Copper equivalent results include 2.5m at 9.7 per cent and 1.8m at 2 per cent in one hole and 2.9m at 2 per cent and 1.5m at 2.6 per cent in the other.
While the company has two rigs at the Antler project, one rig has begun drilling to test targets in the “Roadrunner” area, several kilometres to the north-east. Additionally, the Copper Knob and Rattlesnake Ridge targets, along with a 1.2km-long corridor between them, have recently been mapped and prioritised for initial drill-testing.
The second rig is completing the ore reserve definition drilling, including off the same pads as the two impressive North Shoot holes were drilled. The company expects that rig will also resume exploration drilling, initially to test for the southwards extensions of the Antler deposit.
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