Marmota Ltd (ASX:MEU) has completed most of the shorter holes in its 14-hole diamond drilling program at Aurora Tank in South Australia, with arrangements being made for a more powerful rig to be brought to site to complete the program.
In a diamond drilling update, the company said some holes had to be abandoned as the rig provided was unable to achieve the required depth and experienced several ongoing issues.
For the longer and deeper holes, Marmota said it required a more powerful diamond drilling rig, particularly to drill through the fractured ground of interest.
Gold grains panned on site on July 28 from sandy material in the core barrel.
The contracted driller from Queensland has not been able to bring a larger rig into South Australia due to strict COVID border closures.
Marmota’s fully funded, 1,000-metre drilling program has been adjourned while arrangements have been made for a South Australian drill rig to be brought to site shortly.
Downhole logging
A separate team will carry out downhole logging to provide borehole structural information for geotechnical assessment, including acoustic and optical imaging, formation density and gyroscopic deviation.
Marmota is seeking to complete the program as soon as possible and working around Woomera Exclusion Zone restrictions.
Advancing towards production
The drilling program is primarily a production-focused program, designed to provide detail on the following aspects to bring Aurora Tank into production:
- Geotechnical – the design of optimal pit walls at Aurora Tank;
- Bulk density measurements – required for completing a resource estimation and scoping/ feasibility studies; and
- Bulk samples – to enable the final metallurgical testing phase across different weathering zones and different areas of the deposit such as the first diamond drilling in the high-grade NW flank.