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Evolution’s cash splash on Cue JV with Musgrave as drilling unveils bonanza-grade gold
Mining
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A bonanza 400-gram-per-tonne gold hit at Musgrave’s West Island prospect has enticed mining heavyweight Evolution Mining to increase its planned exploration spend by 60-120% over the next six months.
Musgrave Minerals (ASX:MGV) has unveiled an extremely high-grade gold hit from drilling at the West Island prospect, part of the Cue Joint Venture with Evolution Mining (ASX:EVN) over Lake Austin in Western Australia’s Murchison district.
Diamond drilling delivered a top hit of 4.26m at 41.5 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, including 0.41m at 400.2g/t, from 160.74m, along with another significant intercept of 6m at 2.7g/t from 125m.
Drilling has identified multiple new northwest trending lodes, each with strike lengths of over 200m and open in all directions.
This led Evolution to opt to take over management of the JV and boost its exploration spend from $5m, agreed to in June last year, to $8-11m for the 2022 financial year.
“The gold system at the Cue JV with Evolution continues to deliver strong results with diamond drilling confirming the potential for multiple high-grade basement gold lodes within the dolerite sill at West Island,” Musgrave managing director Rob Waugh said.
“Evolution increasing the exploration budget in H2 2022 and electing to act as earn-in manager from 1 January 2022 is a positive move and an indication of the upside potential of the joint venture ground.”
Evolution can earn a 75% interest in the JV area by spending $18m on exploration over a five-year period. To date, the company has spent about $9m.
Follow-up aircore drilling at West Island on Lake Austin has extended the mineralised envelope, with mineralisation remaining open in all directions.
Musgrave said significant aircore gold intercepts indicated that the high-grade zones in dolerite likely extended at least 1.6km in strike.
New aircore intercepts included 34m at 0.64g/t gold from 124m, 10m at 1.43g/t from 78m, 12m at 0.93g/t from 78m, and 17m at 0.49g/t from 100m to the end of hole.
The West Island zone is part of a broader regional 7km-long anomalous gold corridor within the JV area.
The mineralisation at West Island is hosted within a structure like that hosting the high-grade Great Fingall and Golden Crown deposits 25km to the north at Cue. These two Westgold Resources (ASX:WGX)-owned deposits host a combined 4.4 million tonnes at 14.1g/t for 2 million oz of contained gold.
Diamond drilling to test the basement beneath regolith gold mineralisation on Lake Austin is continuing. Results are pending for five diamond drill holes at West Island and 72 aircore drill holes on the JV area.
This article was developed in collaboration with Musgrave 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.
