Well, we are going to hear a bit more about Westgold Resources Ltd (WGR) and its Rover 1 project in the Northern Territory after a spectacular day’s trading yesterday in the wake of the company release of a statement and reports containing the phrase "bonanza grade gold zone”.
The statement referred its Rover 1 project in the Northern Territory.
Westgold shares leapt 76% to a day’s high of 44c before they eased to end up 54% at 38.5c.
Before yesterday the shares had risen 17% since the start of the year. More than five million of the 120 million shares on issue were traded.
The company said that drilling at the project also intersected "significant” copper, cobalt, iron and bismuth mineralization,
"Our drilling has confirmed Rover 1 is a polymetallic deposit similar to the high-grade Farrago deposit at Tennant Creek, which generated very significant cash margins due to the high gold grade and polymetallic nature,” the statement quoted Westgold’s managing director, Andrew Beckwith.
Here’s the statement, read into it what you will
But if this report is backed up by subsequent drill holes, then it would seem a very attractive deposit has been discovered.
It’s underground, open at depth in the one drill hole (according to the company the drilling stopped for technical reasons) and the assays of gold and iron are quite high. So are the intersections, as you can see from the statement below highlighted in bold.
"Westgold Resources has made an outstanding start to the much-anticipated drilling program at its priority Rover 1 (Cu-Au-Co) Project in the Northern Territory, after intersecting a bonanza grade gold zone in its second drill hole including significant co-product copper, cobalt and bismuth mineralisation and broad intersections of iron mineralisation.
"The Perth-based Company said today (Wednesday) that the results from the hole, WGR1D002, were similar to the nearby high-grade Tennant Creek-style Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) deposits, providing a strong indication of the potential for Rover 1 to become a significant polymetallic resource.
"The current drilling – which marks the first exploration at Rover 1 in over two decades – is initially aiming to confirm and then extend mineralisation based on drilling from the 1970s by Geopeko which returned significant intersections featuring gold grades up to 12.75g/t Au, copper grades up to 2.26% Cu and cobalt grades of up to 0.16% Co.
"Diamond drill hole WGR1D002 intersected the strongly altered and mineralised ironstone-chlorite unit discovered by Geopeko and returned an outstanding overall intersection of 65.75m @ 11.0g/t Au from 492m, including two very high-grade zones of 11.0m @ 18.3g/t Au from 515m and 15.75m @ 29.4g/t Au from 541m.
"Significant co-product mineralisation was also intersected co-incident with this major gold intersection including intercepts of 45m @ 0.99% Cu from 485m including 17m @ 1.93% Cu, 14.75m @ 0.65% Cu from 543m including 2.0m @ 2.14% Cu, 104m @ 0.06% Co from 426m including 23m @ 0.19% Co and 44.75m @ 0.21% bismuth from 513m.
"Of further significance is the
high iron content
within the mineralised ironstones which form part of the overall IOCG system, with intersections including
106m @ 44.2% Fe from 414m.
"Westgold’s Managing Director, Mr Andy Beckwith, said the results from WGR1D002 were very significant, confirming the potential for Rover 1 to emerge as a high-grade gold-copper system with significant co-product cobalt and bismuth mineralisation, as well providing an opportunity to consider processing options to unlock the value of the significant iron mineralisation.
"Our drilling has confirmed that Rover 1 is a polymetallic deposit similar to the high-grade Farrago deposit at Tennant Creek, which generated very significant cash margins due to the high gold grade and polymetallic nature," Mr Beckwith commented.
"The Rover Field was discovered in the late 1970s and is considered to represent a western extension of the Tennant Creek Mineral Field (historical production of +5.5 million ounces of gold and 470,000 tonnes of copper). Westgold secured the grant of the Rover 1 tenement and surrounding Exploration Licences in December 2007, enabling exploration to re-commence for the first time since 1982.
"This is a great start for our 2008 exploration program, where we have now confirmed the historical mineralisation and provided important geological and structural information to assist with targeting of our ongoing drilling," Mr Beckwith said. "The first hole, WGR1D001, confirmed the stratigraphic sequence with encouraging copper and cobalt mineralisation."
"We are on target to establish an initial JORC-Code compliant resource estimate for Rover 1 by the end of 2008," Mr Beckwith added."
Westgold says it has completed the first two holes, WGR1D001 and WGR1D002 of the initial confirmatory programme, with the objective of confirming historical Copper-Gold-Cobalt-Bismuth mineralisation within the IOCG related ironstone and chlorite formations at Rover 1.
"Significantly, the exploration is blind, as the prospective basement rocks lie under approximately 130 metres of flat lying non-conforming cover rocks of the Wiso Basin."
Westgold Resources said in a statement that it has undergone a major transition in the past 18 months following its acquisition of Navarre Resources Pty Ltd, through which it acquired the Rover
