ASX-listed gold explorer, Venus Metals, has teased out encouraging deeper gold hits from drilling at the Sovereign gold discovery at its joint-ventured historic Youanmi gold project in WA’s Murchison region.
Latest RC drilling at the Sovereign prospect encountered high‐grade gold mineralisation down-dip, with the most notable intersection being 8m grading 5.03 grams per tonne gold from 160m including 2m at 15.83 g/t from 160m and 3m at 2.86 g/t from 165m.
The two holes recently completed at Sovereign were targeted at the depth extensions of gold mineralisation intersected in previous drilling and look to have been right on the money.
Interestingly, grades at Sovereign appear to be increasing at depth, with the gold occurring in stacked quartz vein hosted lodes.
Venus says it is planning further RC drilling aimed at testing the depth extent of the high‐grade mineralisation at Sovereign.
It is also looking at expanding the drilling program along a newly interpreted trend, with the mineralisation potentially open to the west and south-west.
The company’s most recent drilling was designed to follow up earlier rounds of RC drilling carried out at Sovereign, which is located only a handful of kilometres north of the old Penny West gold mine.
Better intercepts from the previous work were 3m grading 6.61 g/t gold from 78m including 1m at 11.61 g/t from 79m and 10m at 3.64 g/t from 79m including 2m at 10.64 g/t from 82m.
Other notable results from the prior campaigns include 7m at 3.97 g/t from 59m including 1m at 8.19 g/t from 64m and 4m at 2.68 g/t from 116m including 1m at 5.43 g/t from 118m.
The owner of the historic Penny West open pit, Spectrum Metals, was taken over by gold miner Ramelius Resources this year in a cash-and-scrip deal worth about $225 million that was eventually worth closer to $400 million given the rapid appreciation in Ramelius’ share price between the time the deal was agreed to and then consummated some weeks later.
The deal hinged on a new very high-grade discovery made by Spectrum just north of the old Penny West pit known as Penny North that was interpreted to potentially be an offset of Penny West.
Penny North’s indicated and inferred resource was estimated at 799,000 tonnes of ore grading a whopping 13.8 g/t for 355,000 ounces of contained gold.
The $40 million market-capped Venus will be hoping to replicate that success at Sovereign, which is interpreted to lie along strike from Penny North.
Venus and its JV partner, Rox Resources, have a half a dozen or so other high-grade targets in the vicinity including the Taylor’s Reef, Currans North and Red White and Blue prospects.
Watch this space …
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