High grade gold hits at Drone Hill have confirmed the continuity of high-grade fault zones extending from Tesoro’s Ternera deposit. Pic: Getty Images
Tesoro’s first drilling at Drone Hill returns bonanza 173g/t gold hit
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- Tesoro Gold’s first pass drilling returns high-grade gold hits of up to 173g/t gold at Drone Hill
- Results confirm continuity of high-grade fault zones extending northwest from the 1.3Moz Ternera deposit
- Assays pending for two holes drilled at each of the Buzzard and Ternera East targets
Special Report: Tesoro Gold is off to a flying start after first pass drilling at the Drone Hill target within its El Zorro Project in Chile returned bonanza grades of up to 173g/t gold.
Drone Hill is ~700m northwest of the existing 1.3Moz Ternera gold deposit and is one of four high-priority drill targets which sit within a 1.5km radius of Ternera.
It could also connect to the Ternera deposit, which remains open at depth and along strike.
Tesoro Gold (ASX:TSO) has every confidence in its ability to develop a district-scale mining project at El Zorro, which sits 15km from the Pan Pacific Highway and 60km from the port town of Caldera.
This confidence stems from El Zorro hosting Chile’s first-ever identified intrusive related gold (IRG) system, a style of mineralisation known for their multi-million-ounce scale and Tier 1 asset potential.
A notable example is De Grey Mining’s (ASX:DEG) giant +10Moz Hemi gold deposit which recently attracted more than $500m in funding for its development.
However, IRGs are hardly known in Chile with managing director Zeff Reeves noting previously the closest analogues to EL Zorro as being the 50Moz Tintina province that extends from British Columbia through the Yukon Territory and into southwestern Alaska.
Tintina is considered one of the great gold provinces for multi-million ounce deposits, hosting the likes of Northern Star’s (ASX:NST) Pogo gold mine – one of the top three gold producing projects by grade and size in North America (20Mt at 10.1g/t gold) – as well as the undeveloped 30Moz Donlin Creek deposit.
Lending credence to TSO’s belief about El Zorro’s potential, recent surface channel sampling at Buzzard, another of the four high-priority targets, returned 20m at 0.52g/t gold, confirming that gold is indeed present in significant quantities.
“Some of the highest grades” intersected
Assays from the three first pass diamond drill holes returned high-grade gold results that confirm the continuity of high-grade fault zones extending northwest from Ternera.
Notably, hole ZDDH0338 returned a 1.8m intersection grading 77.15g/t gold from a down-hole depth of 59.2m that includes a 0.8m zone at 173g/t gold from 59.2m.
“The exceptional results returned from first pass drilling at Drone Hill are highly encouraging and represent some of the highest grades intersected at the El Zorro Gold Project to date,” Reeves said.
“Gold discovered in these initial holes is associated with a northwest-trending fault system that also hosts high-grade mineralisation within the Ternera gold deposit. This fault system has the potential to link Ternera to Drone Hill over 700 metres of strike.
“We are focused on exploration at four high-priority targets to delineate additional shallow gold extending from or near to Ternera. Any additional resource ounces that are discovered so close to our existing deposit have the potential to meaningfully elevate the already attractive Ternera economics.”
TSO has completed a further two diamond holes at Buzzard and two holes at Ternera East, with assay results expected in the coming weeks.
This article was developed in collaboration with Tesoro Gold, 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.
