Genesis Minerals Limited (ASX: GMD) has received highly encouraging results from the ongoing Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling programme at the Orient Well deposit, part of its recently expanded 100%-owned Ulysses Gold Project in Western Australia.
The Orient Well deposit is located on the recently-acquired Kookynie tenements, as announced in June 2020, and forms part of a cluster of deposits within the Ulysses-to-Orient Well structural corridor that continue to be systematically drilled out.
The initial drilling at Orient Well was focused on confirming historical drill data that were used to estimate the Orient Well Mineral Resource and also to test zones of mineralisation that had returned strong gold results from historical drilling which are not included in any resource estimates.
Of the 27 holes reported in this announcement, eight are from resource confirmation RC drilling completed within and on the margins of the Orient Well Mineral Resource envelope and 19 are holes located outside and to the south of the Mineral Resource.
Genesis has now completed approximately 53 holes at the Orient Well deposit which has an existing JORC compliant Mineral Resource of 1.5Mt @ 1.3g/t gold for 61,000 ounces. A further 20 holes are currently being drilled for a total of 73 holes while further holes are being planned.
The Greater Ulysses drilling programme, which will continue over the remainder of CY2020, will comprise a combination of Resource definition and expansion drilling along the Ulysses-to-Orient Well corridor.
Managing Director, Michael Fowler, said that in light of the success of the drilling programme to date, the company has decided to substantially increase the scale of the programme with a further 10,000m of drilling proposed to be completed by the end of 2020.
Results from the now +35,000m drill programme will feed into Mineral Resource estimates that will underpin the expanded Feasibility Study on the development of a significant standalone gold operation at Ulysses, with ore to be sourced from a combination of known underground and open pit Resources. Genesis is targeting completion of this Feasibility Study in the first quarter of CY2021.
Orient Well is the third deposit within the recently acquired Kookynie tenements that we have started to systematically drill test,” Mr Fowler said.
“As we found at the Admiral and Clark deposits from the results released in recent weeks, the drilling supports the historical data and validated the information that was used to produce the JORC compliant Mineral Resources.
“As with the other two deposits, we are also seeing considerable upside from potential extensions of the known mineralisation. In the case of Orient Well, 19 of the 27 holes reported in this announcement are outside of the known Resource envelope – a very exciting development!
“The wide zone of strong gold mineralisation returned from 20USRC543 at depth clearly supports our interpretation that gold mineralisation will extend at depth. Given the shallow depth of the historical drilling there is substantial exploration upside along the entire 1.8km of strike.
“Drilling immediately south of the Orient Well open pit has also intersected shallow gold mineralisation over 300m of strike in the area drilled to date – which represents a great opportunity to define immediate oxide open pittable Resources.
“The outstanding success of the program to date more than justifies our decision to expand the programme by 40%, or 10,000m to +35,000m. We will soon have four rigs working – two RC rigs, a diamond rig and an air-core rig, which will keep us extremely busy right up until Christmas!”
