The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2019 – Published Nov. 1, 2019
Nova Minerals' 2019 drilling outlined 2.5 million oz of gold at the Oxide Korbel target on the Estelle property in Alaska .
Melbourne, Australia-based Nova Minerals Ltd. first looked north to Alaska late in 2017, when it acquired five Alaska properties – Estelle, a gold-copper-silver project about 100 miles northwest of Anchorage; Chip-Loy, a nickel-copper-cobalt-gold-silver-platinum group element project; Bowser Creek, a silver-zinc-lead project; Windy Fork, a rare earth elements property; and Ozzna Creek, a gold-silver-zinc-copper-lead property.
Nova Minerals' 2019 exploration focused primarily on testing the district-scale gold potential in the Oxide area at the north end of the roughly 18-mile-long Estelle property.
Mapping and sampling carried out in 2018 identified two targets at Oxide – Oxide North and Oxide South – that show similarities to the intrusive-related gold deposits being mined at Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine near Fairbanks and Victoria Gold Corp.'s Eagle Gold Mine in the Yukon.
As the result of an accelerated induced polarization (IP) geophysical survey and drill campaign carried out this year, Nova made significant headway toward reporting an initial Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) compliant for Oxide Korbel, a new occurrence in the Oxide area at the north end of the roughly 18-mile-long Estelle property.
"The speed of IP completion, drilling and our commencement of the resource estimation report shows the commitment by all involved to unlock the potential at the under-explored highly prospective Estelle gold project which we believe to be the next globally significant gold camp," Nova Minerals Managing Director Avi Kimelman said in August.
Oxide Korbel is a prospect area that roughly covers the area previously referred to as Oxide Ridge.
SE11-01, the Oxide Ridge discovery hole drilled by Millrock Resources Inc. in 2011, cut 450.7 meters averaging 0.38 grams per metric ton gold.
This hole lies in the southeast corner of what Nova now refers to as Oxide Korbel Resource Block A.
SE12-04, drilled about 450 meters southeast of the discovery hole in 2012, cut 41.5 meters averaging 1.1 g/t gold, indicating the drilling was vectoring toward higher gold grades as it approached a strong geophysical anomaly further southeast.
This hole is within Oxide Korbel Resource Block B.
The results from the drilling at Oxide Korbel were used to calculate an inaugural JORC-compliant inferred resource.
At a cut-off of 0.18 g/t gold, Oxide Korbel hosts 181.3 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.43 g/t (2.5 million oz) gold.
These grades are similar to the 267.6 million metric tons of reserves averaging 0.4 g/t (3 million oz) gold at a Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine near Fairbanks, Alaska.
Nova said the Oxide Korbel mineralization remains open and a major drill program is being planned to target potential extensions.
In addition to Oxide, Nova is carrying out exploration at Shoeshine, an area about 10 miles to the south that covers the Mount Estelle, Train and Shoeshine prospects; and RPM, which covers the Revelation and RPM prospects at the south end of the property.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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