Aurumin Ltd (ASX:AUN) is gearing up to begin its first drilling program this month at the 100% owned Central Sandstone Gold Project in Western Australia.
Reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling are planned with all required approvals in place and an RC drill rig secured.
This RC drill rig is expected to mobilise the week commencing May 9, 2022, following the completion of Aurumin’s current works at Mt Palmer Project within its Southern Cross project.
Aim of program
The upcoming program will focus on testing depth extensions at the Two Mile Hill Deeps Deposit and the down plunge position of the high-grade core of the Shillington-Two Mile Hill Banded Iron Formation (BIF).
Aurumin's managing director Brad Valiukas said: "We are excited to start drilling at our Central Sandstone Project at the Shillington-Two Mile Complex.
“We see the Two Mile Hill Deeps resource as a key part of the project going forward, with the scale to potentially underpin future production.
“This extra drilling could prove important in better understanding the deposit’s potential.”
Two Mile Hill program
Most drilling at Two Mile Hill to date has focused on the top 250 metres of the deposit with an open pit resource of 71,000 ounces defined.
The wider spaced deeper drilling that is present has identified high-grade intercepts in the tonalite, often within larger moderate grade intersections (>2 g/t gold), to a depth of 650 metres below surface.
An underground inferred resource of 500,000 ounces has been defined from 160 metres to 500 metres below surface and the deposit is considered open below this depth.
Aurumin’s planned drill program of five holes for around 3000 metres is aimed at improving the data density in the area of sparser drilling between 250 and 500 metres below surface and will test hypotheses of controls on mineralisation.
This work aims to build towards defining a higher-grade resource that can be progressed towards production.
The program will use RC pre-collars with DD tails completing the holes through the area of interest. The diamond program will focus on the tonalite body, however, mineralisation is also expected in the mafic and BIF units hosting the Two Mile Hill Tonalite.
Shillington-Two Mile Hill BIF drilling
At Shillington-Two Mile Hill BIF deposit drilling will target the down plunge position of the Shillington Open Pit Resource of 2.27 million tonnes at 1.2 g/t for 86,500 ounces and a hypothesised structural control to the BIF hosted mineralisation.
A main aim for the RC part of the program is to intercept and/or identify geochemical vectors towards pods of BIF hosted mineralisation.
It will, therefore, seek to link the core of the Shillington open pit resource with the well-defined high-grade pod of BIF mineralisation on this structure at about 200 metres below surface and in the immediate hanging-wall to the Two Mile Tonalite.
This BIF zone has been closely drilled from surface and is estimated to contain 200,000 tonnes at 3.1 g/t for 20,000 ounces.
By targeting this position up plunge and along the intersection Aurumin seeks to add underground resources to complement the primary tonalite hosted system.
The Central Sandstone Project comprises a 784,000-ounce gold resource and significant project infrastructure that Aurumin aims to use to support a gold mining operation in the future.
Also within the company's Sandstone gold operations is Johnson Range Project with a resource of 64,700 ounces at a grade of 2.51 g/t, midway between Southern Cross and Sandstone.