Bellevue Gold (ASX:BGL) could be on track for a significant resource upgrade after discovering a new high-grade gold lode at its namesake project in Western Australia.
The new Armand lode has been defined over a 450m strike that remains open to the north, down-dip and down-plunge by drilling that returned high-grade hits such as 1.9m at 58 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 380.5m and 3.7m at 26.2g/t gold from 372.3m.
Armand is interpreted to be a previously undiscovered extension of the Bellevue lode and drilling is ongoing to incorporate it into the next resource upgrade that is planned for release in the current quarter.
While this is undoubtably good news for the company, there is potential for more.
The first two holes of a three-hole Western Australia government co-funded EIS drill program has intersected gold at an area east of the Deacon Shear, which could point to the existence of another lode.
Gold mineralisation is associated with quartz-pyrrhotite veining and free gold which is analogous to the Bellevue, Deacon and Viago lodes.
Results from this drilling include 1.2m at 9g/t gold from 1,057m and 1.6m at 9.3g/t gold from 1,096m in the same hole, and 0.4m at 42.3g/t gold from 646.7m.
Managing director Steve Parsons says the latest exploration results vindicate the company’s strategy to maintain an aggressive drilling campaign in parallel with project development.
“We have earmarked $35m for exploration spending on a full program of drilling and project development work over the next 15 months,” he added.
“This substantial investment is central to our dual-track strategy of driving growth in our inventory through aggressive exploration and resource drilling while also advancing the project towards development and cashflow.”
Exploration will include ongoing infill drilling, step-out drilling, resource grade control drilling, and regional exploration at Bellevue, including the high priority Yandal and Kathleen Valley gold projects.
Bellevue Gold (ASX:BGL) share price chart
Gold hits continue near Kalgoorlie
Yandal Resources (ASX:YRL) has intersected its highest gold grades to date at the Gordons Dam prospect at its Gordons gold project in the Kalgoorlie-Boulder region.
The result of 1m at 73.12g/t gold within a broader 8m zone grading 11.03g/t gold from 36m follows on previous shallow, high-grade hits that will be included in the planned initial resource estimate.
Managing director Lorry Hughes says the results highlight the success of infilling widely spaced reconnaissance holes with high-quality reverse circulation (RC) holes.
Results from a further 36 RC holes are pending.
Yandal Resources (ASX:YRL) share price chart
High-grade hits sparks re-drilling plan
Meanwhile, Dreadnought Resources (ASX:DRE) has received assays for a further nine holes from its recent 17-hole drill program to test for extensions of lode mineralisation at depth at the Metzke’s Find prospect of its Illaara gold-VMS-iron ore project.
Significant high-grade hits include 2m at 10.8g/t gold from 102m and 1m at 10.9g/t gold from 89m.
These results follow-up earlier hits of 2m at 39.2g/t gold from 45m, 3m at 21g/t gold from 85m and 1m at 24.8g/t gold from 51m.
However, the most important impact of the results is the confirmation of a flat-lying brittle offset that has resulted in previously drilled holes to the north being considered ineffective.
“This learning is significant and reopens ~80m of potential mineralised strike,” managing director Dean Tuck said.
“We look forward to redrilling the main structure to the north as well as diamond drilling to further advance our structural understanding of the mineralised lodes.”
Dreadnought (ASX:DRE) share price chart
Early cash flow
3D Resources (ASX:DDD) is proceeding with plans to process mullock waste dumps at its Adelong gold project in New South Wales to generate early cash flow.
The company noted in June this year that mullock dumps scattered throughout the project had a substantial amount of work carried out on them with several programs of sampling and bulk sampling already completed.
The latest historical estimate of the waste dumps on record in 2006 was 119,400 tonnes grading 1.54g/t gold.
Since then, about 10,000 tonnes of mullock close to the Adelong plant has been used in its commissioning, producing results at the estimated average grades.
While the majority of this work pre-date even JORC 2004 standards, a review of this work has indicated that the survey methodology and sampling techniques were done to a reasonable standard.
Bulk testing has also indicated that these dumps are amenable to upgrading through simple screening to grades of +2g/t gold, though further work will need to be undertaken before these waste dumps can be reported as a resource.
3D is progressing plans to upgrade the existing plant at Adelong after concluding that it would be more profitable in the long-term than toll treating a high-grade portion of the mullock material.