Quote:
Fresh drill results enhances WKP discovery
Ross Louthean — 26 September 2012
The latest round of drilling results from an epithermal gold-silver deposit near Waihi in the Hauraki goldfield has re-sharpened interest in the project.
Junior partner Glass Earth Gold Ltd (TSX-V and NZAX: GEL) detailed the progress assays received from a new 5,500 metres diamond drilling programme on the WKP project in which managing partner Newmont Mining Corporation is operator and holds a 65% stake.
Newmont subsidiary Newmont Waihi Gold operates the open cut and underground mining operations at Waihi – New Zealand’s only large hard-rock gold operation on the North Island.
Glass Earth said hole WKP32A had an intersection of 0.5 metres grading 61.3 grams/tonne gold and 19.4 g/t silver within a halo of 111m @ 0.6 g/t Au and 1.8 g/t Ag.
Hole WKP33 produced 8.2m @ 6.6 g/t Au and 2.7 g/t Ag.
Glass Earth Gold’s managing director Simon Henderson said the current drill programme, which began in April, has delivered encouraging results from drill holes WKP31, 32A and 33, and confirmed the tenor of high grade veins within a broad lower grade central mineralised central zone.
This drilling phase aims to confirm the major structural controls on mineralisation, with WKP35 “already providing further new and encouraging visual evidence of a major mineralised structure on the EG (Eastern Graben) zone, allowing a focus on resource definition in follow-up drilling campaigns.
Glass Earth said that back in February drilling on the WKP T-Stream high grade vein WKP 31 defined an interval that has been followed northwards in drill holes 33 and 34.
Significant results not previously reported from 31 include 6m @ 1.5g/t Au and 1.5 g/t Ag from 232m down hole. A previously announced result from WKP31 was 9.7m @ 17.2 g/t Au and 22 2 g/t Ag.
On the project’s Central Zone, drill hole WKP 32A tested the southern extensions and into the Western Zone anomaly at depth, demonstrating that this broad zone of mineralisation is persistent to the south, with narrow high grade veins (0.5m @ 61.3 gm/t Au, 19 g/t Ag; 1.2m @ 20.3g/t Au and 12.4g/t Ag), residing within a broader.
This broad zone of +0.5 g/t Au mineralisation is persistent over 750m.
“Exploration within the WKP area continues to demonstrate that it is a large permissive gold system with potential to host significant epithermal gold deposits,” Henderson said.
The WKP prospect covers a 3 kilometre by 5 km mineralised alteration zone, 10 km from Newmont's producing Waihi mining operations where 10 million ounces of gold equivalent has been produced. It is also 5 km north east of the Golden Cross mine that produced 634,000 oz of gold.
The budgeted cost of the current drilling for the joint venture is about $C3.3 M ($NZ4.1 M).
The WKP epithermal system has magnetic/alteration characteristics similar to the Martha epithermal system and has open-along-strike potential of at least 1-2km.
The highlighted bits are comments not reported in the press release. WKP has hotspots of high grade in a lower grade orebody. So does Martha Mine, and no-one forgets how many Moz came out of there. Special mention of WKP35, it must have been a great-looking drill core. They'll be following that up, for sure.