Benchmark Metals Inc (CVE:BNCH) (OTCQX:BNCHF) has outlined this year's exploration plans for the Marmot and Marmot East discoveries at its flagship Lawyers gold, silver project in British Columbia, where it sees potential to expand mineral resources.
In May this year, the explorer unveiled an initial resource for the property, which spans 140 square kiometres, covering the Cliff Creek, AGB, Dukes Ridge and Phoenix zones and the indicated pit constrained resource was pegged at 2.05 million ounces (Moz) of gold-equivalent.
READ: Benchmark Metals granted new work permit to advance Lawyers gold-silver project
"Benchmark is seeing near-term potential for significant expansion of gold-silver ounces with the combination of drilling to expand the existing deposits and drilling to define brand new discoveries," said the company's CEO John Williamson in a statement.
"The Marmot targets have significant potential to generate gold and silver ounces of the same scope and scale as the Cliff Creek deposit. The Marmot and other new targets are all road accessible with mineralization at surface," he added.
The proposed work includes around 10,000 metres (m) of exploration drilling at Marmot and around 2,500m at Marmot East along with 34.8 line-kilometres of induced polarization (IP) geophysics.
There will also be extensive surface sampling and geological mapping and an airborne survey spanning the southern half of the project to identify anomalies that could be associated with porphyry and epithermal mineralization, said Benchmark.
As reported in January 2021, four holes at Marmot returned 'significant' near-surface results, including an interval of 101m showing 0.82 grams per ton (g/t) gold-equivalent (AuEq).
The company also noted that the controls on mineralization at Marmot were found to be similar to those at Cliff Creek, where Benchmark has already defined a bulk-tonnage target in the range of 1.68 to 1.92 Moz of gold equivalent.
Benchmark is focused on developing the substantial resource potential of its huge Lawyers asset, which sits in the prolific Golden Horseshoe of northern British Columbia.
The asset consists of three mineralized deposits that remain open for expansion, as well as more than 20 new target areas along a 20 kilometre trend.
Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com