Riversgold Ltd (ASX:RGL) has lodged a Mining Lease application (M25/389) for its Northern Zone Gold Project, 25 kilometres east-southeast of the Kalgoorlie Super Pit in Western Australia.
Long lease for thorough exploration
The Mining Lease, once approved, will provide tenure security for an initial 21-year period, enabling Riversgold to progress exploration and development activities at a project that has delivered some promising gold intersections.
“The lodgement of the Mining Lease application for the Northern Zone Gold Project is a great next step forward for this fast-growing project,” exploration director Ed Mead said.
“We have drilled up some very significant gold intercepts under the Kalgoorlie landscape and we have a strong belief in this project to deliver very significant future value for Riversgold and Oracle Power.
“Conversion of the tenement status to the higher order Mining Lease increases security of tenure of the project to an initial 21 years and is a necessary important next step should we wish to develop the Northern Zone as a gold mine.
“We are highly encouraged by the recent success of Black Cat’s Myhree open pit operations only 7 kilometres up the road from Northern Zone and we are assessing if similar operational scenarios can be achieved with Northern Zone.”
Approval for the lease is expected to take more than 12 months, during which the company plans to focus on additional drilling to refine the project’s resource potential.
Open, high-grade oxide zone
Recent drilling at the Northern Zone Project has expanded the high-grade oxide zone within a 600-metre-wide porphyry system, which remains open in multiple directions.
Riversgold is leveraging three-dimensional Leapfrog modelling to guide future drilling campaigns, with plans to target shallow high-grade mineralisation for potential reverse circulation and diamond drilling.
“The illustrated Leapfrog figures within this release show that the mineralisation envelope and footprint continue to grow, with the three-dimensional Leapfrog model being used to refine areas for the next round of drilling,” Mead continued.
The project is promisingly near to Black Cat Syndicate’s highly successful Myhree open-pit operation, which is just seven kilometres north of the Northern Zone.
Riversgold is exploring similar processing and development scenarios for its project.
Conceptually, Riversgold has drawn parallels between the Northern Zone and Saturn Metals’ Apollo Hill Project, which is pursuing a low-grade heap leach operation.
“We will continue to drill out this exciting project in the new year,” Mead said.
Riversgold sees this as a benchmark while highlighting the potential for Northern Zone to become an even larger-scale project.
The company plans to continue resource modelling and further exploration before progressing to a maiden mineral resource estimate for the project.