Drilling results are about to start flowing from Gateway’s Gidgee gold project

A major 35,000m drilling campaign is progressing strongly at Gateway Mining’s (ASX:GML) 240,000oz-and-growing ‘Gidgee’ gold project in WA.

Gateway’s main asset is the 1000sqkm Gidgee gold project, an emerging large-scale gold system in the heart of WA’s mineral-rich Murchison and Northern Goldfields.

Five shallow open pits were mined here between 1988 and 1992, producing about 150,000oz back when the gold price languished at around $500/oz.

But over the past 25 years exploration has been sporadic, at best.

Gateway believes there are strong geological analogies between the underexplored Gidgee project and Red 5’s (ASX:RED) 5moz ‘King of the Hills’ gold deposit.

Results so far are very promising.

Drilling is now testing the extent of high-grade gold discovered in the Lower Zone at the ‘Northwest Margin’ last year.

This program returned thick, high grade hits like 15m at 3.0g/t gold from 104m, and 10m at 9.2g/t from 140m.

Gateway is also drilling south of the Montague-Boulder Mineral Resource towards the ‘Caledonian’ pit, “which exhibits the same attributes as that north of the Montague-Boulder Mineral Resource”, the company says.

Recent drilling here hit 5m at 6.9g/t gold from 67m – about 100m south of an existing 240,000oz resource at Montague-Boulder.

This expansive gold system is open in multiple directions.

To date, a total of 42 RC drill-holes for 6,859m, and three diamond drill-holes for 971.2m have been completed.

Drilling has so far encountered the targeted prospective ultramafic intrusive unit as expected in the predicted locations, with assay results from the holes completed to date pending.

Gateway expects assay results to begin to start to flow consistently following the Easter break.

“Our 2021 drilling program is off to a strong start with a large number of holes already completed and submitted for assay,” Gateway managing director Mark Cossom says.

“While the slow turnaround of assay results – an industry wide phenomenon – has been frustrating, we are confident that this situation will begin to turn around quite quickly following the Easter break given the large number of samples currently in the laboratory.

“We have a systematic exploration program mapped out, with an overall program of more than 35,000m of RC, diamond and air-core drilling – and we are looking forward with great anticipation to our first results.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Gateway Mining, 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.