Gold prices are widely expected to rise this week after April futures rose 9.5 per cent to $US1,625 per ounce, the biggest weekly gain since September 2008.
At the current exchange rate, which sees each Australian dollar buy a little more than 61 US cents, this still works out to a very nice Australian gold price of $2,649.65 per ounce.
Kitco’s weekly gold survey showed that 71 per cent of respondents believed that gold prices would rise this week.
Silver posted its biggest weekly rise since April 1987, with the May contract rising more than 17 per cent to $US14.534 per ounce.
With gold expected to resume its bull run, Classic Minerals (ASX:CLZ) has intersected more high-grade gold at shallow depths within its Kat Gap project in Western Australia.
Reverse circulation drilling aimed at testing the northerly and southerly strike extensions returned a top result of 3m grading 62.1 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from a depth of 36m, which includes a higher-grade zone of 1m at 181g/t gold from 37m.
This is well above the 5g/t benchmark that is generally considered to be high-grade.
The company noted that no drilling had been conducted north of the drill line where this result was intersected, and that gold mineralisation now extended over 600m of strike.
“This latest round of drilling has shown that significant high-grade gold can still be intersected at shallow depths well north of the Proterozoic dyke,” chief executive officer Dean Goodwin said.
“It’s still early days and we have a relatively broad drill spacing up the northern end but at this stage it’s looking really good.”
He added that drilling to the south had hit an unexpected 10m zone of supergene gold mineralisation in the granite, indicating that there might be substantial gold in the granite away from the granite-greenstone contact.
Ausgold (ASX:AUC) has intersected broad zones of gold mineralisation within its Katanning project in Western Australia’s south-west.
Drilling at the Jinkas South prospect, which targeted gold mineralisation extending down dip and south of the Jinkas Resource, returned 13m at 1.11g/t gold from 99m and 20m at 0.94g/t gold from 119m in the same hole and 17m at 1.03g/t gold from 93m in a separate hole.
These two holes also returned high-grade hits of 1m at 11.2g/t gold from 142m and 1m at 16.35g/t gold from 73m.
Ausgold says that recent down-hole electromagnetic surveys have developed new target plates that will be the focus of drilling in the coming months.
These plates map the broad zone of pyrrhotite associated with high-grade gold mineralisation, which extend high-grade gold mineralisation at Jinkas South that is open down dip and along strike for more than 400m.
Meanwhile, West African Resources (ASX:WAF) reassured investors today that the COVID-19 pandemic was not impacting mining and production at its Sanbrado gold project in Burkina Faso.
The new producer poured first gold from the project earlier this month and has built up an open-pit stockpile of 250,000 tonnes grading 1.5g/t gold.
It noted that with freight being exempt from the government’s lockdown measures, regular shipments of key consumables and fuel were continuing.
Additionally, gold shipments are occurring via charter flights to operating refineries in Europe.