ALKANE Resources has continued on its stellar run for 2019.
The company’s shares, hovering at about $0.20c in May, have marched upward to $0.80c by mid-October on the back of a strong gold market, the transition to underground mining commencing at its flagship Tomingley Gold Project in NSW and exciting results from its exploration program.
The exploration program has returned and a host of high-grade results from an aggressive drilling campaign at the San Antonio and Roswell prospects, which provide ore feed for the Tomingley Gold Project.
And, in what is being compared to Newcrest’s Cadia East deposit, the company has confirmed a significant copper-gold porphyry mineralisation at the Boda and Kaiser prospects in its Northern Molong Porphyry Project (NMPP).
Cadia 2.0
The project incorporates exploration licences covering 110sqkm of the Northern Molong Volcanic Belt (MVB).
The company said that the MVB within the eastern Lachlan Orogen is considered highly prospective for large porphyry gold-copper mineralisation, such as Newcrest’s Cadia operation.
The NMPP incorporates three licences at Bodangora, Kaiser and Finns Crossing, and is situated conveniently between Dubbo, Orange and Parkes, which will provide the services for the mine.
The exploration work has established a geological framework for the region, which has shown a strong resemblance to that of Cadia.
The company said that although more structurally complex than Cadia, it had been able to reconstruct the geology to show a “stratigraphic sequence very similar to that at Cadia”.
The Boda prospect returned one diamond drill core hole 200m beneath a zone of gold mineralisation previously defined in RC drilling.
The assay results indicated the increase in thickness and grade of porphyry gold-copper mineralisation at depth.
The intercepts included 502m at 0.48g/t and 0.2pc copper from 211m, 313m at 0.62g/t, 12m at 3.28g/t gold, 0.67pc copper from 419m and 35.8m at 0.21g/t gold and 0.49pc copper from 735m to EOH.
Kaiser prospect’s assays have confirmed a strong gold-copper porphyry mineralisation 200m southeast of the near-surface Kaiser deposit.
The drill intercepts were 40m at 1.3g/t gold and 0.22pc copper from 0 meters, 10m at 2.86g/t of gold and 0.36pc copper from 0 meters and 2m at 3.24g/t gold and 0.26pc copper from 25m.
While the grade may appear to be low, porphyry orebodies are known for their easy-mining in large volumes, and for being economically viable at copper concentrations as low as 0.15pc.
Alkane managing director Nic Earner said that the results were exciting for the company and exciting for the region with a history of delivering large, low-grade and long-life gold-copper mines.
“The project area has already delivered some strong indications of a big porphyry system near surface at Kaiser and, along with the results from this diamond drill hole at Boda, we can see clear evidence of Cadia style mineralisation and grade over hundreds of metres,” he said.
“Alkane is immediately prioritising follow up drilling, seeking to determine the scale of this highly encouraging discovery.”
Roswell and San Antonio
Over the past year, Alkane has conducted extensive regional exploration at the Roswell and San Antonio prospects to define the additional resources that have the potential to be mined either via open pit or underground operations to feed Tomingley.
To date, the program has yielded broad, shallow high-grade intercepts that the company says demonstrates potential for material project life extension, and shows that a return to open pit mining and underground extension is possible should the resource be confirmed.
The company reported significant high-grade results after the completion of a 17, 519m RC and diamond core drilling program for both Roswell and San Antonio, located about 4km south of the Tomingley gold project, and the El Paso prospect.
The massive 60,000m resource definition drilling program begun in June 2019 at Roswell and San Antonio, with the intention to define an initial inferred resource at the two prospects.
The aim of the exploration is to provide additional ore feed, either at surface or underground, in the future to the Tomingley gold operation.
At San Antonio, the company reported significant intercepts of 42m grading at 2.61g/t gold from 42m; 24m grading 6.30g/t gold from 48m including 12 meter grading 9.92g/t gold from 147m; 9m grading 2.33g/t gold from 24m and 44m grading 2.76g/t gold from 147m; 4m grading 14.6g/t gold from 252m including 2m grading 26.1g/t gold from 254m.
The significant intercepts at Roswell included 45m grading 3.66g/t gold from 195m including 3m grading 16.0g/t gold from 220m; 24m grading 5.33g/t gold from 186m including 3m grading 16.0g/t gold from 188m and 3m grading 21.8g/t gold from 194m.
Tomingley Gold Operation
The Tomingley Gold Operation has begun the transition to underground mining in 2019.
The mine has been in operation since 2014. In order to ensure the resources have ‘reasonable prospects of eventual economic extraction’, the open pittable resource have been restricted by an “indicative optimistic pit shell estimated at a gold price of $2000 per ounce with the potential open pittable component assessed at >0.5g/t gold cut-off”.
The company will be processing low-grade ore stockpiles until underground ore becomes available in early 2020.
