Bardoc Gold Ltd (ASX:BDC)’s recent drilling at the North Kanowna Star Project, which forms part of its 3.07-million-ounce Bardoc Gold Project near Kalgoorlie, has revealed a significant mineralised corridor.
More than 10 high-priority targets have been identified for further exploration, upgrading the potential scale of the project.
Positive assay results, including visible gold, from infill core drilling, have also been received from Bulletin South.
The North Kanowna Star area is seen as a key long-term component of future exploration within the Bardoc Project area, with multiple targets similar to those along the +1 million ounces Zoroastrian/ Excelsior corridor.
Long-term exploration project
Bardoc Gold executive director Neil Biddle said North Kanowna Star was emerging as an exceptional long-term exploration target.
“The scale of the alteration and mineralisation across the North Kanowna Star project area is truly exceptional, extending over more than 3 kilometres in length, similar in strike to the Zoroastrian/Excelsior corridor that forms the backbone of our 3.07-million-ounce Bardoc Gold Project.
“North Kanowna Star is emerging as a long-term exploration project, where we see an opportunity to delineate substantial new resources with the potential to provide strong additional value to the Bardoc Gold Project.
“Our exploration team has identified more than 10 high priority prospects, with technical work now underway to integrate the geological, geophysical and geochemical data to rank the prospects and develop follow-up exploration programs.”
North Kanowna Star
North Kanowna Star Project contains multiple prospects over a 3-kilometre strike.
The drilling program comprised 98 aircore holes for 5,562 metres, 47 reverse circulation (RC) holes for 6,205 metres and three diamond core holes for 224 metres, with mineralisation reported in the majority of the holes drilled.
The presence of strong gold anomalism over such a large area makes it a highly-significant location within the local geological landscape.
Results are from several prospect areas, with the highlights including:
- 9 metres at 2.45 g/t gold from 61 metres;
- 1-metre at 18.0 g/t from 47 metres;
- 3 metres at 5.63 g/t from 69 metres;
- 1.2 metres at 13.6 g/t from 35.8 metres;
- 13 metres at 1.03 g/t from 26 metres;
- 2.4 metres at 5.53 g/t from 44.4 metres;
- 8 metres at 1.65 g/t from 32 metres;
- 7 metres at 1.45 g/t from 28 metres;
- 1-metre at 2.88 g/t from 43 metres; and
- 3 metres at 1.10 g/t from 32 metres.
Bardoc’s geology team is collating multi-element geochemical data and incorporating that with the geophysics and logging data from the recent drilling.
This will allow the generation of an integrated geological, geophysical and geochemical model to help drive ongoing exploration programs.
Bulletin South
Bulletin South Deposit, 8 kilometres south-southwest of the Zoroastrian/Excelsior corridor, has a current open pit ore reserve of 561,000 tonnes at 2.0 g/t gold for 35,000 ounces gold.
The reported mineral resource of 849,000 tonnes at 2.1 g/t gold for 57,000 ounces of contained gold is open both along strike and at depth, indicating strong potential to grow the resource.
Diamond core drilling in this program targeted transitional and fresh rock mineralisation to enable the collection of metallurgical samples for detailed metallurgical studies of the ore zones including comminution, cyanide and lime consumption as well as XRD1 and QEMSCAN2.
Two key results from this drilling were:
- 22.9 metres at 2.31 g/t gold from 68.7 metres, including 4.2 metres at 5.64 g/t from 86.8 metres; and
- 14.6 metres at 1.11 g/t from 103.5 metres.
Bulletin South is a large mineralised system with a broad high-grade open-pitiable ore body that is included in the current definitive feasibility study (DFS) mine plan.
Further exploration is required to better understand and explore the down plunge extensions of the mineralisation.
Next steps
The company has initiated a strategic review of the development strategy for the 3.07-million-ounce Bardoc Gold Project, which is being managed by Biddle.