The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2022 - January 19, 2023
Nova Minerals 2022 drilling at RPM North cut long sections of gold mineralization at this higher-grade deposit at Estelle.
As the first snows of the 2022 winter season arrived at Estelle, drillers continued to test the Cathedral gold discovery at the north end of the district-scale property in Alaska.
By the time the calendar flipped to 2022, Nova Minerals Ltd. had outlined 9.6 million ounces of gold in the inferred and indicated resource categories at its Estelle project. And with the drills cutting intercepts such as 258 meters averaging 5.1 grams per metric ton gold, the Australia-based company was quickly adding gold to the resources on this 125-square-mile property about 100 miles northwest of Anchorage, Alaska.
In February, Nova published a "snapshot in time" scoping study that outlined a mine at the Korbel deposit at the north end of the Estelle property that would produce 2 million oz of gold over 15 years.
The open pit operation outlined in this study would mine 195 million metric tons of ore from the Korbel Main deposit averaging 0.41 grams per metric ton, which would be upgraded to 0.7 g/t gold with an ore sorter before being fed into the mill.
This first look at mining at Estelle was based on a 2021 resource calculation that outlined 286 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.3 g/t (3 million oz) gold; plus 583 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.3 g/t (5.1 million oz) gold in the Korbel Main deposit.
RPM North, a new deposit about 16 miles (25 kilometers) south of Korbel, hosts an additional 23.1 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging two grams per metric ton (1.5 million oz) gold.
This first scoping study, however, did not consider mining RPM, a higher-grade deposit about 16 miles south of Korbel that hosted 23 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 2 g/t (1.5 million oz) gold at the time.
With only six holes drilled into RPM North at the time of the resource calculation, Nova had barely scratched the surface of RPM going into 2022.
To build resources at RPM, Nova launched a 31-hole drill program at this early staged deposit in June that included 23 holes at RPM North, which hosted the initial resource, and eight at RPM South, an adjacent target with no previous drilling.
Nova began its 2022 RPM drilling near RPM-005, a 2021 hole that cut an incredible 132 meters averaging 10.5 g/t gold, and then stepped out to the west.
Early results from this drilling indicate that this deposit could be larger than previously imagined.
Highlights from the 2022 drilling at RPM North include:
• 140 meters averaging 6.5 g/t gold from a depth of 44 meters in RPM-008, including 56 meters averaging 10.1 g/t gold and two meters averaging 53.4 g/t gold.
• 155 meters averaging 2.4 g/t gold from a depth of 16 meters in hole RPM-010, including 30 meters averaging 10 g/t gold and three meters averaging 56.4 g/t gold.
• 258 meters averaging 5.1 g/t gold from surface in hole RPM-015, including 161 meters averaging 8.1 g/t gold, and 14 meters averaging 51.2 g/t gold.
• 67 meters averaging 10.4 g/t gold from a depth of 112 meters in hole RPM-022, including 34 meters of 19.4 g/t gold.
Nova also completed its first drilling at RPM South, where rock samples collected from the surface returned assays with as much as 103 g/t gold and hosts a magnetic geophysical anomaly that is similar but smaller to the one found at RPM North.
Highlights from the 2022 drilling at RPM South include:
• 101 meters averaging 0.7 g/t gold from a depth of three meters in RPM-013, including 18 meters of 1 g/t gold.
• 259 meters averaging 0.6 g/t gold from a depth of five meters in RPM-019, including 39 meters of 1 g/t gold.
• 309 meters averaging 0.5 g/t gold from a depth of seven meters in RPM-026, including 40 meters of 0.8 g/t gold.
In addition to RPM, Nova continued to carry out drilling in the Korbel project area. This includes the first-ever drilling at Cathedral, an exploration target about 1,000 meters southwest of the 8.1-million-oz Korbel Main gold deposit.
Sampling of outcropping quartz-arsenopyrite veining at Cathedral in 2020 returned grades as high as 114, 98.3, 37.1, 24.5, 19.6, and 11.1 g/t gold.
Nova says the correlation between gold and arsenopyrite at Cathedral indicates that this target could host the feeder system for the large gold system at Korbel Main.
Assays from Cathedral were still pending as of the writing of this report.
The results from the 2022 drill program at Estelle are being incorporated into an updated resource that is serving as the basis for both a second scoping study and a prefeasibility study that is investigating the engineering and economic parameters of mining at both Korbel and RPM.
Due to slow assay lab turnaround times delaying the ability to update the resource estimate, Nova has opted to advance these studies in parallel.
"In light of this, PFS level trade off studies have now commenced in tandem which aims to optimize the project with a view to increasing the gold production schedule and NPV (net present value) significantly across the Estelle Gold Trend," said Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen.
While the Estelle project is entering the PFS stage of assessment, the district-scale property still hosts an enormous amount of exploration upside that Nova is looking forward to testing.
"With this, and no shortage of further targets, including the recently discovered mineralization at our Train-Shoeshine and Stoney prospects, there is no doubt that our global resource inventory will continue to grow for many years to come as we continue to unlock Estelle's potential as a world-class trend," said Gerteisen.
"We are only getting started as we continue on our path to increase resource size, confidence and towards commercial production," he added.
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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