Argo Exploration Ltd (ASX:AXT) has begun a survey programme designed to cost-effectively assess the potential prospectivity of areas beyond Argo’s existing drill holes at its Intercept Hill project in South Australia.
The data obtained will provide additional information to assist in potential Joint Venture discussions and aid targeted future drilling campaigns into conductive, more strongly altered areas to maximise the potential for outlining ore-grade mineralization within the broader fertile mineralized system.
Argo has contracted Adelaide-based Solo Geophysics & Co to conduct down-hole, time domain Transient Electromagnetic (TEM) surveys of the company’s drill holes at Intercept Hill.
Independent review of Argo’s exploration data confirms a significant fertile, basement-hosted copper-gold-mineralized iron oxide alteration (IOCG) system has been intersected by drilling at Emmie North Prospect. The system is believed to be structurally connected to the Gunson-Xstrata Emmie Bluff system to the immediate south.
Argo is using the TEM surveys and mineralogical analysis to help identify areas of higher sulphide concentrations believed to occur within the body of the known fertile IOCG system at Emmie North.
More massive mineralization is expected to occur at the intersection of structural features in the basement, such as intersecting faults, in breccias zones and columns, and in hematite aprons developed on massive copper- gold-bearing magnetite-rich protore.
The down-hole TEM surveys are expected to establish the presence of off-hole conductors and to generate vectors pointing towards conductive and potentially more intensely mineralized zones.
Through the down-hole surveys, Argo aims to establish intersecting vectors, from two or more holes at Emmie North prospect, to better define likely positions of conductors within the basement.
Studies have shown that compositional variations within alteration minerals can be used to indicate proximity to economic-grade mineralization and provide an additional vector to ‘ore’. The results of this analysis will support the TEM survey data by providing another level of detail to better aid future drill targeting.