Norwest Minerals has launched into preparation for the first diamond drill campaign at the Bulgera gold project in WA, following up a series of high-grade RC hits.
The 10-hole program will target down dip of last month’s eye-catching intercepts from a newly discovered high-grade zone at Bulgera, which included 16m at 7.3 grams per tonne gold, including 3m at 30.3g/t, from 194m; 6m at 11.8g/t gold, including 3m at 22.4g/t, from 218m; and 5m at 15.3g/t gold, including 1m at 71.9g/t, from 194m.
Norwest (ASX:NWM) is currently drilling RC pre-collars to within 50m of the projected high-grade gold zone at Bulgera for the first five of seven planned phase one holes.
The remaining two phase one diamond holes and three phase two holes are awaiting heritage clearance – currently scheduled for late July.
The diamond drill rig is expected to arrive onsite in early August, and will drill from the base of the pre-collars through high-grade gold mineralisation targets.
Norwest CEO Charles Schaus said the company was pleased with the progress it was making at Bulgera.
“We are very excited to be planning the first ever diamond drilling program to be undertaken at Bulgera, especially so soon after our discovery of this new high-grade gold zone,” he said.
“The diamond drilling will reveal an enormous amount of information concerning the lode-scale geology, including controls on the gold mineralisation.
“Importantly, a high-grade diamond drill intersection similar to those encountered by ARC drilling up dip would be a significant step in understanding the magnitude of this high-grade gold discovery.”
Determining depth
Today’s news is the latest in a series of work started by Norwest last year, reviewing gold deposits and prospects along the Marymia mine sequence, which extends the length of the Plutonic Well greenstone belt on which Bulgera is found.
That work showed that widths and gold grades of drill intercepts located near the various deposits along the belt appeared to increase below 100m.
It led Norwest to undertake a 5000m RC drilling program at Bulgera in October, with the aim of determining if gold mineralisation below the historical Bulgera and Mercuri gold deposits continued at depth accompanies by an increase in gold tenor.
In mid-February this year, Norwest announced it had intersected 5m at 15g/t gold from 194m at Bulgera, with last month’s standout RC results reported in follow up to that intercept.
Norwest’s Bulgera tenements include a near-surface resource of 2.9 million tonnes at 1g/t for 93,880 ounces of gold, with minimal historical drilling completed below a depth of 100m.
The project spans two exploration licences, spanning a total 36.8km2.
This article was developed in collaboration with Norwest Minerals, 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.
