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The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
From upgrading, expanding Korbel to testing other intriguing gold prospects, Nova Minerals has no shortage of targets North of 60 Mining News – July 30, 2021
The primary focus of the 2021 drill program at Nova Minerals' Estelle gold property in Alaska is to upgrade and expand the 4.7-million-ounce gold resource outlined so far at Korbel.
Nova reports that the first three holes drilled at RPM have encountered the mineralized zone being targeted.
Adding to the major Australian investments in unlocking Alaska's mineral potential by South32 Ltd. and Northern Star Resources Ltd., junior explorer Nova Minerals Ltd. is briskly expanding the multi-million-ounce gold resource it has outlined over the past three years on its Estelle gold property in the state's Southcentral region.
According to a calculation published in April, the Korbel Main deposit at Estelle hosts 518 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.3 g/t (4.7 million oz) gold.
This resource is based on more than 30,000 meters of drilling completed in 102 holes at Korbel through the end of 2020.
Nova's 2021 drill program is being carried out at the scale needed to expand and upgrade the enormous Korbel resource, while also testing another of the intriguing gold targets across the 125-square-mile (324 square kilometers) Estelle property.
"In time, we expect to define multiple new shallow gold resources that will further support our goal of aggressively growing the resource inventory as we continue to move towards gold production at the Estelle gold project," said Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen.
Upgrading, expanding Korbel
Much of the drilling at Korbel is focused on upgrading and expanding the large resource already defined ahead of feasibility-level studies for developing a mine at the multi-million-oz gold deposit.
"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," Gerteisen said.
In addition to providing close enough spacing to upgrade portions of the inferred resource to the higher confidence indicated category, this infill drilling is encountering wide zones of higher than resource grade gold toward the southeast end of the 1,500-meter-long deposit.
"Resource development infill and step-out drilling continues to intersect strong mineralization with very encouraging gold grades over wide intervals," said Gerteisen.
One such hole, KBDH-066, cut 314 meters averaging 0.4 g/t gold from a depth of 15 meters, including a 67-meter subsection averaging 1 g/t gold from 249 meters.
The latest batch of results, reported by Nova on July 19, continued to cut longer sections of higher-grade gold mineralization in the Southeast zone.
This includes 310 meters averaging 0.7 g/t gold from a depth of two meters in KBDH-072, including 113 meters of 1 g/t gold from 33 meters.
Another hole, KBDH-080, cut 323 meters averaging 0.4 g/t gold from a depth of five meters, including 110 meters of 0.5 g/t gold from 12 meters.
In addition to providing the drill density to upgrade the resource, Gerteisen says the drilling in the southeast area indicates the potential for expanding this higher-grade area of the deposit by as much as 1,000 meters. As such, the Nova Minerals CEO is requesting that the board delay the release of a scoping study currently underway until the full potential of this area is fully understood.
"Our lead engineers have strongly advised that these drilling results are likely very material and should ideally be included in our scoping study before release," he explained.
As such, it is likely that the scoping study will follow a resource update that includes 2021 drilling to be calculated later this year.
Pending the outcome of the scoping study, Nova plans to immediately begin work on a prefeasibility study for the Korbel project.
Revving up RPM
While advancing Korbel toward feasibility level studies is the primary focus of this year's work, Nova is also investigating the intriguing RPM target toward the southern end of the Estelle property.
And the company is excited by what it is seeing in the core from the first three holes drilled into this underexplored gold target about 16 miles (25 kilometers) south of Korbel.
"The rocks we are observing in the drill core from the holes completed to date at RPM show we are hitting the target and intersecting the mineralized zone," Gerteisen informed investors on July 21.
One hole drilled by a previous operator in 2012 cut 177.4 meters averaging 0.79 g/t gold from a depth of 4.3 meters at RPM, including 50.2 meters of 1.75 g/t gold.
Nova's surface exploration near the discovery hole, an area now known as RPM-1, turned up rock samples with strong gold grades, including one sample averaging 291 g/t gold.
At RPM-2, a second area about 600 meters to the southeast, Nova geologists have 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.
Nova is testing both zones, which could be the surface expressions of one larger zone
"We believe there is a possibility that the RPM1 and RPM2 zones converge at depth, and this drilling program is designed to test this theory," Gerteisen said.
Based on the results of this drilling, the company plans to publish a maiden resource estimate for RPM, one of more than a dozen prospects the company has identified across the district-scale Estelle property.
Assays are pending from more than 10,000 meters of drilling so far this year at Korbel and RPM.
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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