Copper-gold drilling is a go at Far East’s Woyla project

Far East has kicked off the first-ever drilling at its flagship Woyla copper-gold project in Indonesia’s Aceh Province to test for high grade epithermal and porphyry deposits.

While previously held by the likes of Barrick and Newcrest in its 25-year history, the company trumped the two majors by securing approval to carry out drilling – something neither was able to achieve.

Far East Gold (ASX:FEG) believes that Woyla is one of the most highly prospective undrilled copper gold projects in South-East Asia and will now test this theory by carrying out diamond drilling at the Anak Perak prospect.

The 18-hole Phase 1 program totalling 2,560m will test the Anak Perak Main Zone vein system along 900m of strike to demonstrate resource potential within this area.

Drill sites will be at 100m to 150m spacing and will test the vein at 50m and 100m vertical depth, and a second rig is being mobilised to site to complete the program.

This will be followed by the 16-hole Phase 2 program totalling 2,440m that will test an additional 800m of Anak Perak vein strike length.

Once these are completed, the company will progress to a program of resource definition drilling using multiple drill rigs.

Other activity

Far East has completed the current phase of induced polarisation survey works which were carried out in collaboration with the Geological Agency of ESDM at the Anak Perak prospect’s 4,700m long epithermal vein system.

It has also started IP works at the Rek Rinti prospect vein system to further refine it planned drill program.

Woyla project

Woyla covers 24,260 hectares and is known to host epithermal vein systems to 13,000m across its four priority prospect areas.

Sampling has returned bonanza grade assay results of up to 119g/t gold and 1,179g/t silver within vein samples exhibiting ginguro bands, which are an important textural feature common to high-grade vein deposits such as Gosowong in Indonesia (6Moz gold at grades of 20-40g/t) and Hishikari in Japan (8Moz gold at grades of 30-40g/t).

The recent grant of the “Approval of the Borrow-Use Management Ability Statement of the Gold and its Associated Mineral Exploration Activities” (the Borrow-Use licence), paves the way for the company to carry out advanced exploration – including drilling – across about 7,181 hectares of forest designated land.

This grant also allowed Far East to remove the Contract of Work for Woyla from its voluntary suspension status.

This article was developed in collaboration with Far East Gold, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.