Black Cat’s initial drilling of the area below the current workings of its Paulsens Gold Operation is ‘live’ with mineralisation and the potential for a significant Paulsens Repeat zone is still very much in play.

While the three initial diamond holes did not directly intersect the Paulsens Repeat seismic target, they did intersect anomalous gold of 0.75m at 1.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from a down-hole depth of 511.3m and 0.32m at 1.01g/t gold from 470.72m which prove that the area is ‘live’ with mineralising fluids that are known to form gold deposits.

Additionally, the intersected geology validates the company’s new geology model and provides encouraging indicators, including quartz-carbonate-sulphide vein swarms within highly sheared metasedimentary rocks, which is consistent with the rocks that host the high-grade Paulsens-style mineralisation which was mined for more than 10 years.

The holes also provide important stratigraphic and seismic calibration data which will guide follow-up drilling that will begin once a second underground rig arrives on site late this month.

Repeating mineralisation could deliver the goods

Successful drilling of Paulsens Repeat is potentially very lucrative for Black Cat Syndicate (ASX:BC8) as it positions itself to restart the Paulsens Gold Operations as the 1,250m long structural target that runs broadly parallel to main lode could be the ‘next Paulsens’ due to its structural similarity.

While somewhat shorter than the main lode, which has a strike length of at least 2,200m, if it contains similar high-grade gold it could bring the project back its heyday.

And what a heyday it was.

Paulsens was the seed that kicked off the rise of Northern Star Resources (ASX:NST) into the major gold producer that it currently is, producing some 907,000oz of gold at an average grade of 7.3g/t gold before it was left behind.

However, it remains a prize for junior explorers with the underground resource of 94,000oz at an average grade of 5.9g/t within a total resource of 232,000oz once regional open pits are taken into account.

The underground resource is due to be updated later this month after a couple of months of drilling which produced many high-grade hits.

Pauls also boasts a well maintained 450,000tpa processing facility and all the infrastructure needed to resume operations relatively quickly.

Black Cat managing director Gareth Solly noted that despite Paulsen’s production of high grade gold, it was never subjected to downdip exploration looking for repeats to mineralisation beneath the controlling shear structures.

“There is strong potential for repeat style mineralisation and our first three holes validate the shear has seen strong mineralising fluid flow below the existing workings, which is an important step to finding ‘another Paulsens’,” he added.

“These holes have provided important data which will help direct our next phase of drilling to test the large seismic target beneath the existing workings.

“We believe this systematic drilling will result in additional high-grade discoveries. Downhole EM will also be utilised in the next round of drilling which will begin by targeting the interpreted Lower Gabbro intersection with the shear. There is plenty of unfinished business here.”

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Black Cat Syndicate, 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.

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