Kalamazoo Resources (ASX: KZR) has launched a drill program at its Mallina West intrusive gold play on the same major shear zone as De Grey Mining’s (ASX: DEG) extraordinary Hemi gold discovery in the Pilbara.
De Grey’s Hemi discovery is unusual because it is a gold intrusion into granite and not greenstone. Hemi now weighs in at about 11-million-ounces of gold just 70 kilometres to the northeast of Kalamazoo’s Mallina project which the company’s data suggests is prospective for the same style intrusion-hosted gold deposits.
Yesterday Australia’s biggest gold miner, Northern Star Resources, lobbed an all-scrip takeover bid for De Grey that values the company and its flagship Hemi project at $5 billion. Northern Star says the acquisition would provide it with an additional Tier-1, low-cost production centre in WA when Hemi is eventually developed.
The drill program at Mallina will encompass some 1500m of combined reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling homing in on four priority zones within its Wattle Plains prospect area.
Wattle Plains previously yielded a drill intersection of 1m at a standout 10.35 grams per tonne gold from 99m that remains open in all directions.
Kalamazoo management believes advanced geophysics at Wattle Plains suggests a 2.7km-long surface gold anomaly overlies a newly identified 1.5km x 1km subsurface magnetic anomaly that was interpreted as a prospective diorite intrusion akin to Hemi.
The drilling campaign is underpinned by a $126,625 co-funding grant from the WA Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme to offset exploration costs for the high-impact drill program.
The results of recent 3D geophysical modelling, surface mapping, anomalous soil geochemistry and RC drill results including 1m @ 10.35g/t Au at the highly prospective Wattle Plains prospect has generated some exciting new targets for us to drill test.
Kalamazoo Resources CEO Dr Luke Mortimer
Dr Mortimer says the Wattle Plains location - within the regional scale Wohler shear - gives management considerable confidence that its drilling program has the potential to discover significant Hemi-style gold mineralisation.
Kalamazoo’s program will focus on shallow positions within the 3D magnetic anomaly while revisiting a high-grade gold intercept identified from historic drilling.
With gold prices remaining near all-time highs, the timing couldn’t be better for Kalamazoo to deliver an intrusion-hosted gold discovery, particularly when the Pilbara looks as though it will finally be developed into WA’s latest gold centre.
The geological similarities between Wattle Plains and De Grey’s Hemi deposit continue to match up and it is fair to say that the drill bit now needs to do its work. Perhaps Northern Star will even keep its eye on Kalamazoo’s program and its developments.
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