Aurelius Minerals drills highest-grade intercept to date at Aureus East

Aurelius Minerals (TSXV: AUL) has reported its highest-grade interval ever from underground drilling at its Aureus East gold project in Nova Scotia, about 140 km northeast of Halifax.

Drillhole AE-20-007 intersected two metres grading 132.4 grams gold per tonne starting from 335 metres downhole, including 1 metre of 264 grams gold. That hole also hit multiple high-grade zones to a depth of 472 metres, with one interval returning 1 metre of 11.7 grams gold from 471.7 metres.

“AE-20-007 is our most successful hole to date, but notably, all of our Phase 1 drill holes, to date, have intersected gold mineralization,” Mark Ashcroft, the company’s president and CEO, said in a press release.  “That’s a tremendous achievement considering what limited information we started with, and doing it all in the middle of a travel restricting pandemic.”

Hole AE-20-007 started in December 2020, reaching a depth of 205.4 metres, and in January the company extended the hole’s depth to 534 metres.

An earlier drill hole, AE-20-006, drilled at the same location as AE-20-007, was stopped at 231.5 metres after the hole veered off to the north and out of the favourable horizon. However before doing so, the hole cut across Gold Zone 9 (one of 10 distinct gold horizons the company has identified with assays greater than 10 grams gold per tonne), returning 4.2 metres grading 2.43 grams gold from 61.8 metres, including 0.9 metres of 9.21 grams gold.

The drill results are from the Aurelius’ Phase 1 drill program, which started last year and consisted of 12  holes (4,725 metres) drilled from underground, and another nine holes (3,000 metres) drilled from surface. Assay results are pending from five of the underground holes and all nine surface holes. 

The company has two drill rigs turning at Aureus East. One rig is underground at Pad 2 and is exploring west of hole AE-20-007, targeting the extensions to zones intersected in AE-20-007. The second rig is drilling from surface and targeting favourable southern legs to the gold horizons and specifically at Gold Zone 9.

Aurelius has also completed Phase 1 drilling at its Aureus West property, adjacent to Aureus East, with 10 holes completed to date. 

At press time in Toronto, Aurelius was trading at 6¢ per share within a 52-week trading range of 2¢ and 14¢. The company has about 276 million common shares outstanding for a $16.6-million market capitalization.