Vango Mining Ltd (ASX:VAN) has commenced reverse circulation (RC) drilling at the Contessa Gold Prospect on the Ned’s Creek JV with Lodestar Minerals Ltd (ASX:LSR).
A key objective of the program is to test the granite contact as a potential structural control on high-grade gold at the Contessa prospect.
Vango is earning 51% interest by spending $5 million on exploration over three years.
RC drilling program
The RC drilling program, of up to 3,000 metres, will also test the supergene gold blanket adjacent to the granite contact at Contessa to assess the potential for defining an open pit resource.
The drilling program is expected to take two to three weeks to complete.
Contessa Prospect
The granite contact at Contessa represents a major structural corridor that has not been effectively tested.
Drilling along strike at Central Park and Gidgee Flat prospects has confirmed that gold mineralisation occurs within and adjacent to late intrusions preferentially localised on the granite-greenstone contact.
The Contessa mineralisation comprises a series of north-dipping, stacked lenses within an intensely altered host sequence.
Mineralised lenses have been defined over a strike distance of 200 metres in RC and diamond drilling (system remains open) that reported a number of high-grade gold intersections within an extensive, mineralised sericite-pyrite alteration halo.
The Contessa supergene zone will be targeted in this program to confirm and refine the distribution of significant gold mineralisation in aircore drilling, with the aim of identifying a potential open-pit resource.
Lodestar Minerals
Lodestar Minerals, a Western Australian gold and base metal explorer, has discovered multiple zones of syenite intrusion-related gold mineralisation at the Ned’s Creek Project on the Yilgarn craton margin, 150 kilometres west of Imbin.