NickelX scores WA grant to drill for gold at Biranup

NickelX has secured a co-funding grant of up to $180,000 for a planned diamond drilling program at its Biranup gold project in WA’s Albany Fraser Oregen.

Under the Western Australia state government’s EIS, companies get funding for half of drilling costs up to the grant amount.

The company plans to drill four holes to test the Black Dragon and Red Dragon gold targets which have both seen limited historical drilling.

These are located about 30km northeast of the Tier 1 Tropicana gold operations and 35km southwest of the emerging Hercules gold discovery, which is spatially coincident with the Black Dragon shear zone.

NickelX (ASX:NKL) managing director Matt Gauci noted that both prospects represented compelling gold exploration targets while the ongoing review of Biranup had identified very underexplored high priority gold targets, which resulted in the successful Exploration Incentive Scheme grant.

“Now having prioritised the targets in support of this EIS Drilling Grant, the company is organising an IP survey, aircore, RC and diamond drilling program in due course, and following the company’s current exploration programs at the priority Cosmos South nickel project and Dalwallinu nickel project,” he added.

Drill targets

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.

While multiple mineralised veins have been recorded, limited historical drilling has thus far failed to explain the surface gold-silver-tellurium anomalism or provide information about the orientation, structural controls on, genesis, or source for the mineralisation.

Historical drilling at Red Dragon also stopped too short to intersect significant mineralisation.

Planned holes at Black Dragon will test a coincident IP resistivity and surface geochemical anomaly while drilling at Red Dragon will test the down-dip extension of a known gold mineralised shear zone that dips gently to the southeast.

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.