Australian explorer Tianshan Goldfields (TGF-L, TGF-A), pursuing a drill program on its Gold Mountain property in the Xinjiang-Uygur autonomous region (historically, Turkestan), has intersected several long gold zones on a prospect called Balake.
The Balake zones join another prospect, Yelmand, as the major focus of Tianshan’s exploration on the property, near the border with Kazakhstan about 500 km west of Urumqi. Both are flat-lying zones of breccia in a fragmental volcanic sequence, with replacement gold mineralization.
The drilling, which tested an area around a surface showing of altered breccia, has now established that there is mineralization along a north-south length of about 700 metres. The holes were drilled at high angles (mainly around 70) and most cut multiple intersections ranging from 4 to 71 metres in core length.
The best intersections included 71 metres grading 1.4 grams gold per tonne, 60 metres grading 0.88 gram, and 18 metres grading 0.95 gram per tonne.
Tianshan has an 80% interest in the project, which consists of eight permit areas making up just over 500 sq. km. The Xinjiang Geology and Mineral Resources Technology Development Co., an agency of the regional government, holds the other 20%.
The permit areas cover parts of an east-striking belt of Paleozoic sediments and volcanic rocks, with one centred in a belt of Proterozoic sedimentary rocks to the north. Much younger intermediate-to-felsic porphyries intrude the layered sequences and are believed to be the source of the mineralization.
The central part of Balake is in a fault-bounded block about 400 metres wide and 1,000 metres long, which extends east through another deposit, Jinxi, to a prospect called Pond. Two drill holes at Pond intersected 24 metres grading 2.1 grams gold per tonne and 5 metres grading 1.9 grams per tonne.
Balake appears to be a southward extension of the Yelmand deposit, which had already been defined on the property. Yelmand has an indicated resource of 22 million tonnes grading 0.7 gram gold per tonne, based on a 0.3-gram cutoff grade. Another 31 million tonnes at 0.6 gram per tonne is inferred. Moving the cutoff grade to 0.75 gram per tonne, the indicated resource falls to 8.8 million tonnes grading 1 gram gold per tonne and the inferred resource to 18 million tonnes grading 1 gram per tonne.
The hoped-for tiger of which Yelmand is the tail and Balake — well, let’s call it the tail’s tigerward extension — is a deposit that would join up a series of mineralized zones in the northwestern part of the Gold Mountain concession. That would run through the Jinxi gold zone to the southeast and the Mayituobi gold zone about 3 km to the east of Balake.
Jinxi — the tiger’s ticklish loin — has 10.4 million indicated tonnes at 0.8 gram gold per tonne and 21.2 inferred tonnes at 0.6 gram per tonne, again based on a 0.3-gram cutoff. Mayituobi, its velvety snout and ears, has an inferred resource of 8.4 million tonnes grading 0.9 gram per tonne, at the same cutoff.
Recent drilling on Jinxi confirmed discontinuous mineralized zones on the deposit’s northwest flank, with 76-metre and 13-metre intersections both averaging around 0.3 gram gold per tonne.
At Mayituobi, several drill holes in the northern part of the deposit determined the northernmost extent of the mineralization. One hole for which assays were complete in July showed a 16.3-metre intersection grading 1.1 grams gold per tonne and a 6-metre intersection at 1.1 grams farther down; another hole intersected 14.3 metres grading 1 gram near surface. More recent assay results included a 33-metre intersection that graded 1.3 grams gold per tonne.
Detailed-level ground magnetic surveys are under way along that trend, mainly to define the structures. Because most of the mineralization found so far has been in fault-bounded blocks — which are presumed to be channelways for hydrothermal fluids to get to the permeable fragmental units — Tianshan is looking for the magnetic survey to reveal structural breaks that would be the limit of future drill targets.
Tianshan is doing reconnaissance-scale mapping work on two other concessions, Naogaitu, about 20 km southwest of Gold Mountain, and Urum-Tulasu, about 30 km southeast. The work is a follow-up on regional geochemical surveys.
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