Reverse circulation (RC) drilling by Patronus Resources Ltd (ASX:KIN, ASX:PTN) at its Cardinia East gold project in the Leonora region of Western Australia, has indicated strong potential to grow the project’s existing 475,000 ounce mineral resource.
The drilling delivered significant intercepts from both the Rangoon-Collymore and Cardinia Hill targets, extending gold mineralisation a further 1.2 kilometres to the north along the Rangoon–Collymore trend and a further 250 metres south of the existing Cardinia Hill Resource. The mineralisation remains open to the north and south respectively.
The new zone forms part of a broader four kilometre mineralised trend defined by air core (AC) drilling, which extends from Rangoon to Hobby.
Patronus Cardinia tenure showing current resources.
The results highlight further exploration potential within Patronus’ Leonora assets, with the drilling forming part of a larger resource definition and exploration program that is now underway across both the Cardinia East gold projects and the Mertondale gold project.
Patronus Resources executive chairman Rowan Johnston said: “These results from our RC drilling at Cardinia East are extremely encouraging, identifying a substantial 1.2 kilometre extension of the Rangoon–Collymore gold trend to the north of Rangoon. This underscores the prospectivity of our tenements and supports our strategy of expanding the mineralised footprint in the region.
“In addition, the intercept at Cardinia Hill also indicates the mineralisation continues along strike to the south-east in an area where we had previously believed gold mineralisation had been truncated. These results and extensions continue to add to the significance of our resources in the hot M&A region of Leonora.”
Rangoon-Collymore drill program
Patronus drilled 27 RC holes for a total of 4,312 metres at Rangoon on a nominal 75m x 200m drill line spacing.
This program was designed to test for potential northerly extensions to the existing Rangoon Mineral Resource of 2.8 million tonnes at 1.32g/t gold for 121,000 ounces of gold.
The drill program was designed to follow-up highly encouraging AC drill results targeting extensions to the Rangoon–Collymore mineralised trend.
Significant intercepts returned from Rangoon–Collymore include:
- 3 metres at 5.69g/t from 77 metres, including 1-metre at 15.7g/t from 78 metres
- 11 metres at 1.25g/t from 58 metres
- 4 metres at 3.64g/t from 26 metres
Drilling has extended the Rangoon–Collymore mineralised trend a further 1.2 kilometres north. The Rangoon–Collymore trend now has a defined strike potential of around 4 kilometres, in addition to the current resource trend of 3-kilometres.
Significant intercepts at Rangoon-Collymore showing a continuous 1.2km gold trend with multiple mineralised horizons.
Cardinia Hill
At Cardinia Hill, five RC holes were drilled for a total of 804 metres to target potential extensions to the existing Cardinia Hill Resource of 2.2 million tonnes at 1.38g/t gold for 97,000 ounces of gold.
Three RC holes were drilled southwest of Cardinia Hill to test continuation of the recently identified mineralised structures, which returned gold grades of up to 20.5g/t gold. The other two RC holes were to test the southeast extension of the main Cardinia Hill structure along strike, which was previously interpreted to have been truncated by an east-west trending fault.
Results included an intersection of 3-metres grading 1.3g/t from 64 metres, which demonstrates that the Cardinia Hill gold-bearing structure continues at least 250 metres south of the previous interpretation. The company believes that further work is warranted to follow-up this “highly encouraging” result.
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