Seems to be very quite in here lately so thought id maybe try and add somthing of interest Excalibur rediscovers the gold-rich Tennant Creek area
Blair Price
Thursday, 5 June 2008
PERTH-BASED explorer Excalibur Mining has not only rediscovered high-grade gold in the historically rich Tennant Creek area of the Northern Territory, but has also located promising fresh deposits missed by previous miners at Rising Sun.
Excalibur Mining's Tenant Creek project
Night shift diamond drilling at Nobles Nob West
With the discovery of gold at Tennant Creek and its surrounding areas dating back to the 1930s, Excalibur’s Nobles Nob and Juno tenements were extensively mined until the end of the 1970s and produced more than 2 million ounces of gold.
However, it is Excalibur’s Rising Sun tenement – some 3km east of the well-known Nobles Nob openpit – which is at the forefront of the junior’s plans to be part of Tennant Creek’s return to its former gold production glory.
Rising Sun was mined from 1936-39, with underground operations producing around 10,000oz of gold until the reserves were first thought to be depleted.
Last month’s drilling results from Excalibur have suggested otherwise, with highlights including an 11m intersection yielding 30.4 grams per tonne gold from a depth of 39m from the surface – including 3m at 97.47gpt gold – while a second hole had an intersection of 24m at 24.62gpt gold 48m from the surface, including 2m at 119.50gpt gold.
What makes Excalibur’s discoveries all the more interesting is that the company has been working off old geophysical and electro-magnetic data collected for previous miners.
While previous mining did not find all the gold in the area, it did establish considerable infrastructure at the Tennant Creek project.
Most importantly, Excalibur's tenements are located near the Alice Springs-Darwin rail line, about 8km from the Tennant Creek township.
Previous infrastructure upgrades included a power grid laid down by past operators. Sealed access roads remain and four-wheel drive vehicles are not required.
The company’s Tennant Creek project covers two main tenement areas with a group at Juno and the rest at Nobles Nob.
The total current JORC-compliant indicated and inferred resource of the project’s tenements amounts to 2.3 million tonnes at 7.12gpt gold for 532,244oz gold.
Excalibur head geologist Matthew Sullivan is in the 23rd year of his exploration career and in similar small size exploration teams he has helped discover 6Moz gold at Kanowna Belle and about 3Moz at East Kundana.
Sullivan said “Tennant Creek is one of the more interesting parts of Australia where geophysics works very well”.
Tennant creek is unlike many other parts of Australia where ground water is salty and conductive to electricity. This tends to cloud the geophysical results.
With an absence of other troublesome conductors in the ground such as graphitic shales, conductivity diagrams from Excalibur’s tenements, like Juno, can clearly show ore bodies and targets through their electrical responses.
The types of mineralisation found in the area tend to be part of clustered hydrothermally-created ironstone pods, often with copper at the higher levels, followed by bismuth and lastly gold.
Sullivan said Rising Sun was originally a minor focus that was only expected to host two pods. Recent drilling has lifted his estimates to at least four or possibly five pods
“We had a view it had been pretty well unloved,” he said.
“We just did some basic work and, hey presto, we have probably discovered a [potential] openpit which no one had really looked at before.”
Excalibur managing director and former Perth stockbroker Alex Bajada ranked Rising Sun as the company’s top prospect from a strong return and low-risk perspective.
“It’s too early to talk about resources as we only have 60 percent of the assays at hand, but we’re highly confident of a new JORC resource at Rising Sun,” he said.
“We’re also confident about the Nobles Nob West area where we also have shallow, high-grade results – and for a company of Excalibur’s size that is exciting stuff”.
“Initial analysis indicates high-grade ore with potential for high tonnage within close proximity to the surface. It doesn’t get any better than that anywhere in the world and yet here we are in an area with existing infrastructure that can support the ore’s extraction.”
Aside from Rising Sun, the other tenement of focus is Nobles Nob West, which is just over 1km from the historical Nobles Nob openpit.
Highlights from recent drilling included an intersection of 8m at 28.3gpt gold at 63m from the surface, including 3m at 67.4gpt gold, and 3m at 9.91gpt gold from 161m, including 1m at 25.70gpt gold.
Drillholes at Nobles Nob West also returned strong copper grades of over 1%, including 1m at 2.46% copper.
Juno is Bajada’s third-ranked target. The mine was run by Peko from 1967-1977 yielding some 840,000oz with an average grade of 57gpt.
The area has a JORC-compliant indicated resource of 321,400oz from 952,000t at 10.5gpt.
Beneath Juno lies the historically defined M10 deposit, which has a JORC-compliant inferred resource of 1.2 million tonnes at 5gpt for 193,000oz.
Sullivan believes M10 could potentially host another significant resource, possibly of Juno’s size, but more holes have to be drilled to substantiate this hypothesis.
Despite considerable delays in receiving assay results, Sullivan said the contracted laboratory has increased its capacity and Excalibur is hopeful of a resource upgrade in the September quarter.
The forward plan is to drill around 100 additional holes using two diamond rigs up until Christmas.
While Excalibur shares have fluctuated considerably and remained under 4c for this year, Bajada said Excalibur was working on adding more stability to the register by bringing in Hong Kong investors and negotiating with fund managers.
He said his company presents a good opportunity for investment in an area with a proven history of very high-grade gold.
“We have extensive infrastructure around our leases. We own 100 percent of our leases. We have completed 60 percent of our drilling program but we only have about 20 percent of our results.
“Most of the results we have to date have been sensational. You are talking a market cap, at these prices, of around 40 millin dollars which is very cheap for a company that already has a 500,000-ounce JORC.”
Only new at this hope i did ok