Sultan Resources Limited (ASX: SLZ) has commenced diamond drilling at the company’s Big Hill Porphyry Au-Cu prospect in the East Lachlan Foldbelt of NSW.
A rig has mobilised to site to complete the first three holes of an up to 10-hole programme designed to assess the potential for the prospect to host porphyry-style Cu-Au mineralisation.
Managing Director, Steve Groves, said drill hole design is based on interpretation of results from the company’s extensive surface exploration program undertaken during the past 12 months since acquisition of the project in March 2020.
Great credit must go to Sultan’s exploration team. In little over a year since acquiring the project, the team have progressed an unknown, greenfields exploration prospect to an outstanding drill-ready East Lachlan porphyry target with similar exploration characteristics to the nearby Cadia and Boda systems,” Mr Mr Groves said.
“The discovery of such a system at Big Hill would be transformative for Sultan, and great reward for our loyal shareholders.”
Drilling is underway with ESF4 exploration activity approval recently obtained from the NSW Resources Regulator for an up to 10 hole, 4500m diamond drill hole program. Diamond drilling will commence from surface and will be undertaken in a staged fashion, with the initial three holes (1200m) designed to confirm the interpretations of surface exploration results for the presence of buried alkalic porphyry intrusive system with potential to host economic concentrations of Cu and Au mineralisation.
The first three holes will target the prominent IP chargeability anomaly (see ASX Announcement 29/04/2021) that lies within a magnetic low and is coincident with significant soil geochemical anomalism.
Mr Groves said that often in porphyry systems, IP chargeability anomalies represent broad zones of disseminated sulphides such as pyrite in an alteration zone halo, but might not be coincident with economic concentrations of Cu-Au mineralisation. The significant mineralised zones can quite often occur on the margins of the intrusive system and can be hosted in surrounding lithologies.
No drilling has previously been completed in the Big Hill area, and Sultan’s initial three holes are designed to provide important 3-dimensional geological information to guide the subsequent seven planned holes.
It is expected that the initial three-hole phase will take approximately four weeks.