NickelX Limited (ASX:NKL) has expanded its gold footprint along strike from the world class Tropicana Gold operations by lodging a further 42 sq. km of Exploration License Applications (ELA’s) adjoining the company’s existing high priority gold targets at Black Dragon and Red Dragon within the company’s 100% owned Biranup Project, located in the Albany Fraser Orogen, WA.
The new ELA’s and the Black Dragon and Red Dragon gold targets are located ~30km NE of the Tier 1 Tropicana gold operations and ~35km SW of the emerging Hercules gold discovery, that is spatially coincident with the Black Dragon shear zone, as well as a >250km-structural feature in gravity data that also passes through Tropicana.
The new ELA’s expand our gold footprint and consolidate our land position at the Biranup Project and in particular, the adjoining Black Dragon and Red Dragon gold targets, which are spatially coincident with the Black Dragon shear zone, as well as a >250km-structural feature in gravity data that also passes through Tropicana,” Managing Director, Matt Gauci, said.
“The new ELA’s have only been the subject of limited exploration and the company will progress data compilation and grant of these ELA’s to build on our high priority gold targets at Black Dragon and Red Dragon.”
The Black Dragon gold target at the company’s Biranup Project is located in the northern Albany-Fraser Orogen (AFO), ca. 30 km NE of the Tier 1 Tropicana gold operations and 35km SW of the emerging Hercules gold discovery, all of which lie along the interpreted Northern AFO Gold Corridor.
The Black Dragon and Red Dragon prospects are situated along the Black Dragon shear zone, a laterally extensive (>100km-long), NNE-SSW to NE-SW striking and ESE-dipping thrust separating the 2,720 to 1,700 Ma Tropicana Zone to the S and the 1,815 to 1,625 Ma Biranup Zone to the N. At the Biranup Project, the Tropicana Zone is represented by the ca. 2,640 Ma Tropicana Gneiss and several intrusive units.
The Biranup Zone is mainly comprised of the 1,815 to 1,800 Ma Black Dragon Gneiss and an unnamed metagranitic unit. Black Dragon is marked by an area of sub-cropping basement surrounded and elsewhere covered by colluvium and wind-blow sand.
Gold mineralisation at Black Dragon is associated with quartz veining, hematite breccia, iron-rich sheared basement schist and gneiss and sericite-altered granite with disseminated pyrite. Individual veins are 0.3 to 5.0m-wide and can be traced at surface for 10 to 30m along strike. Multiple mineralised veins have been recorded, dominantly striking ENE-WSW and N-S. Their dips are unknown. The limited historical drilling has thus far failed to explain the surface gold-silver-tellurium anomalism or provide information about the orientation, structural controls on, genesis, or source for the mineralisation.