The 2019 festive season small cap drilling blitz continues unabated. Today, three companies updated the market on important campaigns to either add to existing gold resources or discover something completely new.

Part of Breaker Resources’ (ASX:BRB) Lake Roe project near Kalgoorlie, the 3.2km-long Bombora deposit, is already a 1-million-ounce monster.

But there’s more where that came from, Breaker says, which is launching a major pre-Xmas program involving three drilling rigs that will continue through 2020.

The Breaker team has done a great job “unravelling the geology” and believes there is huge scope to grow the 1moz resource, exec chairman Tom Sanders says.

“We are now applying this understanding outside the 3.2km resource area to the rest of the 8.5km mineralisation system,” he says.

“The targets are a mix of prospects, some of which have already yielded strong reconnaissance intersections, but which are poorly understood and inadequately drilled due to the early focus on Bombora.

“Other targets have compelling geochemistry with significant aircore drilling intersections that elevate the probability of fresh discovery.

“I think this will translate into cost-effective extensional ounces and further discovery — but it is now time to let the drill bit do the talking.”

The Breaker share price – which is down ~10 per cent over the past six months – nosed slightly higher to 30c in morning trade.

NOW READ: Breaker says ‘brb, just trying to find the end of our monster gold deposit’

 

A reskinned and refreshed Greenpower Energy – now called Great Northern Minerals (ASX:GNM) — is  drilling its newly acquired Big Rush gold project in North Queensland.

The Big Rush mine produced just under 60,000oz back in the day, but Great Northern believes it could be sitting on a lot more.

The explorer has a near surface exploration target (basically an educated guess) of between 115,756oz and 347,267oz of gold down to ~100m vertical depth. Plus-300,000oz would be very nice indeed.

But as Breaker’s Tom Sanders says: “it is now time to let the drill bit do the talking”.

This initial 1000m drilling program will confirm historic drilling results and allow Great Northern Minerals to estimate a new gold resource for Big Rush.

The ~$3m market cap company was steady in morning trade.

 

The past 12 months have been good to Alkane Resources (ASX:ALK).

Prior to that whopping porphyry discovery at Boda in NSW, the company was already a well-established — and very successful — gold miner.

Alkane’s Tomingley Gold Operations (TGO) is an open pit mine that is transitioning to underground through 2019.

But with an underground mine life of just three and a half years, Alkane kicked off a big regional exploration program to find additional gold deposits to feed the TGO.

It was wildly successful.

Exploration drilling in the last 12 months has focused on the Roswell, San Antonio and El Paso prospects, all within 7km of the TGO processing facility. So far this year, significant broad high-grade gold results have been reported for all three.

A 60km drill program to define these gold resources is well underway. Phase one Roswell drilling is now complete, and an initial resource is expected to be released sometime this month.

San Antonio drilling is continuing and – taking into account some delays – Alkane expects to release an initial resource for San Antonio in February 2020.

The Alkane share price – up 92 per cent over the past six months – was steady at 57.5c in morning trade.

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