Azure has been awarded the promising Barton tenement that is close to several large and growing deposits in the highly-prospective Kookynie gold district in WA.

The 200sqkm Barton tenement adjoins the third-party Puzzle North gold discovery and is mostly soil covered.

While Barton has undergone little historical exploration, Azure Minerals (ASX:AZS) noted that drilling did return a top intersection of 7m grading 1.26 grams per tonne (g/t) gold within a 18m zone at 0.77g/t gold that is along trend from Puzzle North.

“The Barton tenement provides Azure with sole ownership of a large and highly prospective foothold in the Kookynie Gold District, which has recently seen substantial increases in gold resources and new discoveries being made close to our property,” managing director Tony Rovira said.

“Barton contains several very exciting gold targets and the Azure team has already commenced our maiden exploration program, with a detailed aeromagnetic survey underway to be followed by aircore and reverse circulation (RC) drilling.

“Given recent exploration successes by other companies in the Kookynie district, Azure is confident that comprehensive and targeted exploration on the largely unexplored 200sqkm landholding has good potential for the discovery of significant gold mineralisation.”

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The Barton project showing areas of gold prospectivity. Pic: Supplied

Barton tenement and exploration

The Barton tenement is located about 40km south of Leonora in the Kookynie district that has produced more than 1.1 million ounces of gold from open pits and underground mining since the 1890s.

Besides Genesis Minerals’ (ASX:GMD) new Puzzle North discovery, the tenement is also close to Genesis’ 1.6Moz Ulysses gold project, Saturn Metals’ (ASX:STN) 944,000oz Apollo Hill project and recent high-grade discoveries by companies such as Metalicity (ASX:MCT).

Most historical exploration in the Kookynie district focused on areas of outcrop and shallow soil-covered terrain.

The company noted that the extensive soil cover within Barton made all previous soil sampling and shallow drilling work ineffective in testing for bedrock-hosted gold mineralisation.

However, recent drilling at Puzzle North identified wide zones of shallow mineralisation associated with quartz veining hosted in hematite-sericite altered granite adjacent to a north-striking granite-greenstone contact over a strike length of 400m.

Azure adds that the nearest mineralised drillholes are about 300m south of the Barton tenement boundary and the mineralised zone remains open and trends directly towards its property.

An airborne magnetic survey is underway over Barton and preparations are underway for aircore and RC drilling.

Initial drilling will follow-up gold mineralisation intersected historically at Daisy Corner, which may represent the northern extensions of Puzzle North.

The company will also test for structurally-controlled, bedrock-hosted gold associated with cross-cutting shears and fault zones elsewhere on the property.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Azure Minerals, 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.