BPM is just a heritage survey away from launching a much-anticipated drill program at its Claw project. Pic: via Getty Images.
Mining
Special Report: BPM Minerals is poised to launch an extensive early 2024 drill program at its Claw project, immediately along strike of Capricorn Metals’ 2.76Moz Mt Gibson project in WA’s Murchison-Midwest region.
The 134km2 Claw project has seen only limited previous exploration over most of the project area.
However, its main claim to fame – and the reason why BPM Minerals (ASX:BPM) is so keen to get to exploring – is that it is interpreted to be the southern extension of the Mt Gibson shear zone that hosts the Mt Gibson mine which produced gold from a modest laterite resource between 1986 and 1999.
While that was reason enough for the company to pick up Claw, Capricorn Metals’ (ASX:CMM) acquisition of Mt Gibson in July 2021 and the accompanying resource estimate of 2.1Moz of gold dialled up the attractiveness of the project significantly.
Since then, resources at Mt Gibson have been upgraded to 2.76Moz of gold while CMM’s resource growth and exploration activities have been moving to within 500m of Claw’s northern boundary.
This makes the 33km of prospective strike at the Claw project particularly intriguing for BPM, which is pushing hard to carry out exploration to uncover its secrets.
BPM has now been granted the Program of Work (PoW) for an extensive ~10,000m aircore and reverse circulation drill program at Claw.
This will test the Louie and Chickie prospects as well as regional structural targets identified from magnetic processing and targeting exercise undertaken by Dr Barry Murphy (ASX:PDI).
“Getting the Claw Project tenements and drilling PoW granted has not been a straightforward process due to the various underlying stakeholders and environmental challenges,” chief executive officer Oliver Judd told Stockhead.
“We’re planning an extensive drilling program in the New Year testing multiple targets along strike of, what is likely to be, one of West Australia’s next major gold mines.
“Capricorn has been making recent strides towards our northern boundary with the delineation of near surface gold resources. Claw is well positioned for a discovery with our mineralised prospects, Chickie and Louie, positioned on this boundary.”
Louie is a 1,200m by 400m gold-in-regolith anomaly located on the northern tenement boundary just 500m from CMM’s recent exploration/resources drilling.
Notably, CMM’s exploration has been expanding southwards and has resulted in an increase in gold resources at Deep South (1.8km from the boundary), a new gold resource at Gunslinger (1km from the boundary) and recently announced exploration drilling at Sundance (500m from the boundary).
At Louie, several anomalous values of up to 90 parts per billion gold were reported within the weathering profile though the fresh rock – the potential primary source of mineralisation was never tested.
Chickie is a 1,000m by 500m gold-in-regolith anomaly on an interpreted dilation within the prospective shear zone.
It is characterised by a coherent, flat lying regolith anomaly with several holes finishing in mineralisation – including 10m at 0.17 parts per million (0.17g/t) gold and 1m at 0.24ppm gold.
Like Louie, the fresh rock has never been tested below the regolith anomaly.
Meanwhile, the regional structural targets were identified using automated edge detection “worming” to highlight gradients in the geophysical data to identify long-lived, deep-seated fault structures as potential fluid pathways for gold mineralising fluids and final trap sites.
BPM has scheduled to carry out a heritage survey in mid-December with members of the Badimia native title claimant group.
This is expected to pave the way for drilling to begin in late January 2024.
This article was developed in collaboration with BPM 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.
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