ASX listed Geopacific Resources has made a number of high grade gold intercepts in PNG, with a best result of 21.77 grams per tonne gold across the Great Northern prospect at its Woodlark Island gold project.
Highlights include 10 metres grading 5.41g/t gold from 74m down-hole that included a 2m hit grading a very significant 21.77g/t gold.
Other results include 3m @ 4.65g/t gold from 5m down-hole and 3m @ 9.54g/t gold from 91m down-hole including 1m @ 19.4g/t gold.
The new hits have improved the company’s understanding of mineralisation controls at the prospect and they have also confirmed historical high grade results which are located just 800m northeast of the 784,000 ounce Kulumadau deposit.
Notably, drilling encountered significant fault-related clay rich zones and significant zones of quartz-carbonate veining with sulphides. These features are similar to the Kulumadau deposit.
Historical drilling at the Great Northern prospect returned gold values including 20m @ 4.39g/t gold while recent surface channel sampling of exposed rocks along the Kweiyau Fault returned an intercept of 18m @ 2.08g/t gold.
Geopacific is also planning to carry out further drilling at the Kulumadau East deposit after a single diamond hole designed to assess a possible plunge extension of a mineralised zone beneath the current pit design intersected 4m @ 2.31g/t gold from 175m down-hole.
Modelling of the drill core and observed mineralisation suggests that the drill hole may have obliquely intersected the edge of the shoot.
Geopacific Managing Director Ron Heeks said: “The results at Great Northern have confirmed and extended the zones from historical drilling. The area was the first tested under the current “bigger picture” resource drilling program aimed to highlight the full potential of the Woodlark mineral field.”
In March, Geopacific started a major regional exploration program across Woodlark Island targeting additional deposits in the corridors between the known deposits and further afield.
A major soil sampling program is being undertaken that has already identified a number of new areas of significant gold anomalisms that will be followed up with additional detailed exploration and drilling if warranted.
The most recent assays from the Talpos prospect in the eastern region returned up to 3.36g/t gold in soils over an area of at least 1 square kilometre at the property.
The Talpos prospect was subject to small-scale historical alluvial gold mining early in the 20th century, but has seen only minimal modern exploration until now.
Reconnaissance mapping and rock chip sampling at the Watou prospect located 3km west-southwest of Talpos has showed a 1.4km long cohesive gold-in-soil anomaly and produced a surface rock chip sample going 48.4g/t gold.
Geopacific has proved up a mineral resource of 1.57 million ounces at Woodlark and a reserve of 1.1 million ounces, both of which are going around 1 gram per tonne gold.
The gold results at the Great Northern prospect bode well for Geopacific’s “bigger picture” drilling program and place the company well on track towards becoming PNG’s next significant gold producer.
