Intrepid Mines (IAU-T) is busy developing two newly found gold zones at its Paulsens gold mine in Western Australia as reserves from the original mine diminish.
Intrepid originally thought mineralization stopped at 300 metres depth but now the company has confirmed mineralization to 500 metres below surface.
A new geological interpretation shows that the main ore body had been offset by the Apollo fault to a new position about 40 metres north and updip of the original structure.
Intrepid calls this new zone Voyager, and has been drilling it since March. In the last three months, the company has drilled 5,370 metres on Voyager, plus another 2,200 metres on the Upper Zone (UZ) extension to the main ore body. Drilling was done from the 895 level hanging wall drill drive, which the company developed specifically for expanding mineralization at the mine.
The UZ zone has been confirmed to 400 metres depth, or about 60 metres below the current decline position so far.
Highlights from drilling UZ include 10.5 metres grading 20.3 grams gold per tonne, and 11.7 metres grading 15 grams gold per tonne.
Over on the Voyager zone, the company says drill grades were lower than the main Apollo zone, indicating that mineralization is structurally modified.
However, the deepest hole drilled so far returned 2 metres grading 69.8 grams gold per tonne, confirming mineralization extends to at least 500 metres depth.
Other intersections from Voyager include 6.5 metres grading 49.7 grams gold epr tonne and 8.9 metres grading 9.2 grams gold per tonne. Intrepid used a cutoff grade of 100 grams gold per tonne.
The company says it will continue drilling to improve geological understanding and plans to do a resource estimate in 2009.
As of January 2008, the Paulsen’s mine had reserves of 163,000 oz. gold. The 250,000-tonne-per-year operation has an average gold grade of 10.7 grams gold per tonne and gold recovery of 93.5%. The mine was commissioned in May 2005 and has produced an average of 80,000 oz. gold per year.
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