Special Report: De Grey Mining’s goal of growing and enhancing its already big gold resource at Pilbara Gold Project to over 2 million ounces is supported by further high-grade success at its Withnell deposit.
Drilling just keeps turning up high-grade lodes, with De Grey (ASX:DEG) today reporting grades of up to 57.95 grams per tonne (g/t).
Now if 5g/t is considered high-grade, then nearly 60g/t is pretty damn impressive.
The main lode at the Withnell deposit is a continuous mineralised structure that now spans 1.2km and remains open — meaning De Grey still has not found the end.
“Withnell is a large 6km long brownfields gold system with a number of shallow deposits already discovered along this trend,” technical director Andy Beckwith said.
“Deeper drilling below the existing Withnell Main shallow open pit shows the mineralisation extends over 1.2km of strike and continues at depth to greater than 400m.”
Blue sky potential
Withnell is currently the largest deposit within the broader Pilbara gold project, with a resource of 6.37 million tonnes at 1.8g/t for 377,200oz.
As a whole, the Pilbara project already hosts a resource of 1.4 million ounces.
Building on the upside is the fact that the shallow resources at Camel, Roe and Dromedary along the 6km of the Withnell shear are interpreted to have similar plunging shoots.
A shallow oxide resource has been previously mined to 45m depth by a previous owner.
But there has been very little drilling below 100m depth under these deposits, offering De Grey plenty of blue-sky exploration potential.
The remaining 60km of the Withnell Shear to the east and west remains essentially untested, with only very limited drilling testing under the thin veneer of sand cover.
De Grey said several significant but isolated intercepts, such as 4m at 5.11g/t and 0.56m at 49.8g/t, had the potential to develop into additional lodes with follow-up drilling.
“Over the next 12 months we will continue to test for high-grade plunging shoots beneath the Withnell open pit and along the 6km strike below the other deposits,” Beckwith said.
These latest drilling results will be included in a new resource update expected to be released this month.
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