pulled this from the "Other" site....
Excalibur draws on history
Thursday, December 06, 2007
LIKE King Arthur drew the sword from the stone, so Excalibur Mining has unsheathed old data from its Tennant Creek project in its quest to release more gold. By Mark Mentiplay - RESOURCESTOCKS*
Excalibur Mining believes a year extensively re-examining 30 years of exploration data at its Tennant Creek gold project in the central Northern Territory may provide the key to releasing another 2 million ounces.
The company has launched a 15,000-metre drilling program that is targeting a significant gold resource upgrade of potentially 2 million ounces among the remnants of two major Tennant Creek mines and outlying deposits that have already produced that much.
The company's geological team, which includes three senior geologists, expects to have a new resource estimate completed at the end of the drilling program that will hopefully add significantly to the current JORC-compliant indicated and inferred 2.3 million tonnes at 7.12 grams per tonne gold for 532,244 ounces of contained gold.
Excalibur has also recently acquired the gold and precious metal rights to a prime 12,000-square kilometre tenement package, including an extensive Newmont Mining database, in the Territory's 11 million ounce Tanami and Marla regions. The company has already received several farm-in approaches.
However, Excalibur Managing Director and well-known former Perth stockbroker Alex Bajada told Tennant Creek is the company's prime focus.
The company's prospects there include the famous Noble's Nob and Juno gold mines.
Noble's Nob, one of the largest open-cut gold mines in Australia in its day, produced 1.12Moz from 1939-1996, while Juno yielded some 840,000oz when run by Peko between 1967-1977 and had an average grade of 57gpt.
Historic underground diamond drilling at Juno � a priority target for Excalibur � has returned massive grades, including 1.53m at 12,883gpt from 16.7m within a wider intercept of 670gpt over 32m from 12.5m. Other noteworthy historical hits included 6.7m at 833.6gpt from 24.4m and 36m at 210gpt from 19.5m.
The new program includes 10,000m of reverse circulation and 5000m of diamond drilling to test 12 targets thrown up by the past year's research and re-evaluation of 30 years of exploration data.
"The results are very exciting and this drilling program represents the most significant attempt to further explore one of the richest gold producing areas in Australian history," Bajada said.
"The drilling will be in historically high-grade regions to infill gaps in existing drilling and look more closely at some areas we believe were missed.
"We think we've got potential for about two million ounces."
Bajada acknowledged the current program is a long way from proving up that sort of asset.
He expects it will take several months and be followed soon after by a new resource estimate.
"We plan to drill the hell out of this place over the next 12 to 18 months to better define the resources and I'd be pretty disappointed if we didn't get up to the two million ounce level. We have the real expectation that this is a world class asset," he said.
The RC drill rig is on its way to site, with the diamond rig expected onsite soon. The company is negotiating for a third rig to accelerate the drilling program.
Initial targets include high-grade multiple pods at Juno and Noble's Nob, and nearby satellite deposits such as Rising Sun and M10; any of which could produce early cash flow.
Juno contains the most ounces of the three resources currently defined with a JORC-compliant indicated resource of 321,400oz from 952,000 tonnes at 10.5gpt, followed by M10 with a JORC-compliant inferred resource of 1.2 million tonnes at 5gpt for 193,000oz and 18,000oz at Noble's Nob's with a JORC-compliant inferred resource of 174,000t at 3.2gpt.
The Juno deposit is a steeply plunging pipe of gold mineralisation with some spectacularly high gold grades. Previous drilling encountered high-grade mineralisation on the south side of the east-west orientated stopes and the area will be a prime new drilling target.
M10 lies underneath Juno and was intersected by previous diamond drilling from the underground workings. This will be further drilled to confirm and infill previous intersections, expand the resource and investigate a possible link to nearby Juno West.
Noble's Nob was worked by underground methods and later as an openpit down to 100m.
Bajada said there is geophysical target down plunge to the east of Noble's Nob that has received little or no drilling in the past and will be diamond drilled in the current program.
There are also excellent new targets a few hundred metres east and west of the openpit.
Excalibur's Tennant Creek project is conveniently close to infrastructure being near the Alice Springs-Darwin rail line, about 8km from the Tennant Creek township and within a power grid laid down for past operations. The company also has a large workshop, office and core storage facilities in Tennant Creek.
Excalibur is also carrying out an extensive electromagnetic survey over the Brown's Range South area within its recently acquired Tanami project in the Northern Territory, west of Tennant Creek.
This work will be completed in conjunction with Palace Resources, which holds the uranium rights.
There has been scant exploration in these regions and limited drilling, so the results of the electromagnetic work and evaluation of the Newmont data, including surface samples grading up to 119gpt, will identify targets expected to be drilled soon.
Bajada said the recent opportunity to take a strategic stake in the Tanami region where more than 11Moz of gold has been discovered in mines such as Callie, Tanami, The Granites and Dead Bullock Soak by the likes of Newmont, Falconbridge, BHP Billiton and Anglo American, was too good an opportunity to miss.
The company is evaluating several farm-in approaches on the ground and the early money is on some sort of joint venture.
Excalibur has also identified targets on its 700sq.km Yilgarn uranium project where it is looking for large, low grade, near surface deposits. The acquisition is still subject to shareholder approval.
"These two projects, particularly Tanami-Marla, give us a range of exploration and development options in this market," Bajada said.
"Single project companies are hard to rationalise, but the focus is on Tennant Creek."
The company has $3.5 million in the bank, which is more than enough to cover drilling over the next 18 months, but is considering a further cash raising, possibly around $7 million, shortly.
* This report, first published in the November 2007 edition of RESOURCESTOCKS magazine, was commissioned by Excalibur Mining