Pacific Nickel drilling draws 26-hole straight flush at Jejevo

Pacific Nickel’s first foray into exploration in the Solomon Islands has paid off with all 26 holes drilled at its Jejevo DSO project intersecting nickel mineralisation.

Notable intersections from the drill program, which returned near-surface results in line with historical drilling by Sumitomo, include 9.4m at 2.11% nickel, 8m at 2.18% nickel and 8m at 1.93% nickel.

Importantly, the results have allowed Pacific Nickel Mines (ASX:PNM) to proceed with an independent resource assessment for Jejevo and carry out a preliminary DSO marketing assessment.

DSO refers to “direct shipping ore” – namely, minerals that require only minimal processing such as crushing before they are exported, which keeps costs low.

Chief executive officer Geoff Hiller says the drilling, which was the first exploration work PNM undertook in the Solomon Islands, has confirmed the company’s expectations of the Jejevo resource.

“The Jejevo drilling program has been a success from the initial field setup, completion of drilling, sampling, and freighting of samples to the ALS laboratory in Brisbane,” he added.

“This has now confirmed the resource drilling and definition protocol for the current Kolosori drilling program being carried out by the same team.”

A 64-hole drill program is currently underway at the Kolosori nickel project to infill the current resource area for the purpose of increasing the confidence level, test for possible extensions, and to provide samples for metallurgical testing.

Jejevo nickel project

Pacific Nickel holds a 80% interest in the Jejevo project that had been previously drilled in 2013.

Prior to the company starting drilling, its consultants, Mining One, had incorporated detailed historical work carried out by Sumitomo Metals and Mining to construct a new 3D block model at Jejevo from raw drilling and sampling data.

This led to the development of a 64-hole drill program, of which the 26 holes drilled to date are part of, and for the company to generate a conceptual exploration target of between 4.9Mt to 6.6Mt at a grade of between 1.4% and 1.6% nickel.

This article was developed in collaboration with Pacific Nickel Mines, 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.