Gold: Meteoric plummets 27pc on subpar drilling results

In March, former cobalt explorer Meteoric Resources (ASX:MEI) picked up 24 tenements in Brazil’s Alta Floresta Belt, home to over 40 known gold deposits and host to major miners like Anglo American and Vale.

Since then Meteoric has been a darling with investors as the Brazil gold hunt heats up.

A 1.2c stock on April 1, the explorer had motored to 4.7c by last Friday — that’s a 291 per cent return for investors.

But while early drilling at the Juruena project looked pretty good — including hits like 20.6m at 94.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 96.8m – maiden results from the previously undrilled Novo Astro project released today are not very inspiring.

Drilling beneath the artisanal open pits at the Jose prospect returned one very thin, high-grade intercept; 0.5m at 38.8g/t. The other two holes assayed so far have returned anomalous (low-grade) gold.

The stock was punished, losing 27.66 per cent of its value in early trade.

It’s early days, of course. Twelve holes have now been completed across Novo Astro, with two more in progress to complete the initial 2,500m drilling program.

On the ground there is an expectation of significant gold intercepts at Novo’s Matteus and Graca prospects, Meteoric managing director Andrew Tunks says.

“At the Graca and Matteus prospects, where we are currently awaiting results, we have seen stronger alteration and veining than witnessed at Jose,” he says.

“We anticipate receiving the next batch of results from Novo Astro in January 2020 as well as further results from Juruena.”

In other ASX gold news today:

Explorer African Gold (ASX:A1G) is drilling seven underexplored high-grade targets in a world class gold producing region in western Mali. Four of the seven targets were lightly drilled in the 1990s and early 2000s and returned noteworthy gold intercepts – like 6.6m at 115.5g/t gold – but were never followed up.

“We are very excited to be drilling our maiden program in such a world class mining district adjacent to major gold mines,” African Gold’s chief exec Glen Edwards says. “It is incredible that our target areas either have never been drilled or that they have only had a handful of holes drilled over 20 years ago.”

Sabre Resources’ (ASX:SBR) newly acquired, early stage Younami gold project was christened ‘Bonanza’ by previous owners. A bold prediction. But Bonanza’s location, a stone’s throw from Spectrum’s (ASX:SPX) Penny West project is promising at the very least:

Sabre is now planning a detailed aeromagnetic survey across Bonanza “with the aim of locating structures and lithological units that may host gold within the greenstone-granite sequence”.

WA explorer Alloy Resources (ASX:AYR) has returned shallow, thick, and high-grade gold intercepts (the holy trifecta) from its Horse Well Joint Venture with miner Silver Lake Resources (ASX:SLR) in WA. Results included 14m at 5.22g/t, just 22m from surface.

“The results at Palomino in particular, confirm that the Horse Well JV area has potential for high-grade gold mineralisation which is very close to surface,” Alloy exec chairman Andy Viner says. “These results build on the data that will be used to advance our mineral resources towards indicated status and then used for studies into economic development.”