NickelX is laying out plans for golden treasures

NickelX (ASX:NKL) is on the proverbial hunt for the dragon’s hoard with plans to undertake a 1,000m drill program at the high-priority Black Dragon and Red Dragon targets.

There are several reasons why the company is excited about this program, which is poised to be carried out by diamond drilling experts DDH1 (ASX:DDH) in the March quarter, 2022.

Both targets are located just 30km northeast along strike from AngloGold’s 10.3Moz Tropicana gold mine, which was recently valued around $3bn, while historical rock chip sampling has returned results of up to 573 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 626g/t gold.

And it’s not just the rock chips that have NickelX on the edge of its seat. Limited drilling on the targets have also returned results such as 9m grading 7.08g/t gold and 3.88g/t silver from surface.

Managing director Matt Gauci says Black Dragon and Red Dragon – both located inside a 10km by 3km northeast-southwest striking zone of surface gold anomalism – are ‘compelling structural targets’ with significant historical results.

“NickelX has designed a targeted diamond drilling program primarily seeking to understand structural and textural information on the gold mineralisation such that we can plan future programs to explore what is a grossly underexplored target within the world class Tier 1 Tropicana trend, located in the Albany Fraser Orogen,” Mr Gauci adds.

The gold anomalism is also spatially coincident with the Black Dragon shear zone as well as a +250km structural feature in gravity data.

Both projects are expected to complement the company’s Fire Dragon nickel target, which is also located within the Biranup project.

Black Dragon and Red Dragon

The targets are situated along the laterally extensive Black Dragon shear.

Black Dragon is marked by an area of sub-cropping basement surrounded and covered by colluvium and wind-blow sand.

Gold mineralisation is associated with quartz veining, hematite breccia, iron-rich sheared basement schist and gneiss and sericite-altered granite with disseminated pyrite.

What limited historical drilling has failed to explain is the fascinating surface gold-silver-tellurium anomalism, or provide information about the orientation, structural controls, or source for the mineralisation.

NickelX says variability in gold grades between some original and repeat assays indicate the presence of coarse gold in the system, with both historical rock chips and drilling results potentially significantly under-reported due to the absence of a more reliable assaying method.

This article was developed in collaboration with NickelX, 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.