The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Nova focused on upgrading, expanding the resource in 2021 North of 60 Mining News – April 9, 2021
The expanded gold resource at Korbel is based on more than 30,000 meters of drilling completed through the end of 2020.
Two high-grade gold samples collected from the RPM target on Nova Minerals' Estelle property in Alaska. The rock on the left returned assays of 291 g/t gold. The right sample, collected about 700 meters south, contained 103 g/t gold.
Nova Minerals Ltd. April 7 announced an updated and expanded resource for the Korbel Main gold deposit on its Estelle project in Alaska.
According to the new calculation, Korbel Main hosts 4.7 million ounces of gold in 518 million metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) compliant inferred resource averaging 0.3 grams per metric ton gold.
Based on the results from recent ore sorting studies that show a significant improvement in mill feed grades, the new resource was calculated using a cut-off grade of 0.15 g/t gold, which is slightly lower than the 0.18 g/t gold used for the previous resource estimate.
Further details of the ore sorting test work can be read at Nova affirms Korbel ore sorting viability in the March 19, 2021 edition of North of 60 Mining News.
This resource is based on more than 30,000 meters of drilling completed in 102 holes at Korbel through the end of last year.
"Korbel Main's global resource continues to grow. Our 2020 drilling proved successful, seeing an increase of over 2 million oz from our 2019 maiden resource, bringing Korbel Main to 4.7 million oz, which remains wide open in both directions along strike, to the west and at depth," said Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen.
Upgrading the inferred resource to the higher confidence indicated category will be a major focus of drilling going forward.
"While we do have good data density near the surface at each drill pad, the distance between the pads remains wide at several hundred meters apart," said Gerteisen. "The Korbel deposit has turned out to be so expansive that it will take further infill drilling to get closer drill spacing to provide the data density to more confidently define continuous Indicated level resources between the pads."
In addition to infill drilling, one rig is currently testing extensions of resource blocks A and B, which host the current resource.
Nova says resource blocks C and D, as well as the Cathedral, You Beauty, Isabella, and Sweet Jenny targets in the immediate area, could also add gold to the Korbel resource in the future.
And Korbel is one of several gold targets identified across the 18-mile- (29 kilometers) length of the Estelle property.
"Estelle is a district scale project, and Nova is on a mission to unlock it, with multiple exciting targets that offer huge potential to continue growing the overall resource inventory across the project area," said Gerteisen. "Mineralization remains open in multiple directions and we have numerous well-established targets, some with historic drilling such as RPM, which we plan to drill and release a maiden resource on this year."
Lying about 16 miles (25 kilometers) south of Korbel, RPM is an intriguing target that could coalesce into a deposit with higher grades than Korbel.
One hole drilled at RPM in 2012 cut 177.4 meters averaging 0.79 g/t gold from a depth of 4.3 meters, including 50.2 meters of 1.75 g/t gold.
One rock collected about 50 meters southeast of the 2012 RPM discovery hole contained 291 g/t gold and a second sample from about 50 meters further southeast averaged about 5 g/t gold.
In an area about 750 meters to the southeast, Nova collected multiple rock samples with high-grade gold. The highest-grade samples from this area contained 103 g/t, 13.1 g/t, 9.3 g/t, 9 g/t, and 8.8 g/t gold.
"This will add serious depth to the Estelle Gold Project pipeline with two resource deposits to continue to grow on our path to production," the Nova Minerals CEO said of the potential at RPM.
Drilling at RPM is slated to get underway before mid-year.
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.
Reader Comments(0)