Shallower than expected mineralisation is leading to an accelerated and less costly Guinea gold projects auger drilling campaign for Volt Resources Limited (ASX: VRC) and has opened the door for the company to drill more holes.
The initial campaign planning included the three project areas with drilling on four exploration permits planned for 1,122 drill holes for a total of 16,830m. The programmes are designed to generate initial Reverse Circulation and Diamond Drilling targets to be undertaken later this year.
Drilling has now been completed at the highly prospective Kouroussa and Fadougoupermits in Guinea with a combined total of 483 drill holes for 5,062m drilled for an overall average depth of 10.5m per drill hole.
However, the original planned depth for each drill hole was 15m to drill through the lateritic cover to intercept the saprolite rock (“softer” underlying geological rocks).
The actual average depth of 10.5m to date is resulting in significantly less overall metres being required to be drilled to achieve the planned target footprint for the drilling programme. This is accelerating the auger drilling programme along with a reduction in actual costs versus plan.
As a result of the savings in time and money, the company is considering additional drill targets while the drilling services contractor and field team is mobilised on site.
A total of 258 samples from the Kouroussa drill programme have been transported to the SGS laboratory located in Mali. Assay results from the Kouroussa samples are expected to be received and announced in late March 2021.
A further 271 samples from the Fadougou drilling programme have been composited and are in transit to the SGS laboratory in Mali.
Meanwhile, the exploration team has relocated to commence the auger drilling programme for the Nzima permit. The programme is comprised of 103 drill holes for a total of 1,545m. Similar to other permit drilling programmes, the average planned hole depth is 15m but will be amended by the actual depth required to intercept the saprolite rock.
Drill pad preparation is underway at Nzima and field team members have commenced pad preparation at Konsolon, the final permit with the largest drilling program in the current planned drilling campaign.
Volt has six permits covering an area of 348.7 square kilometres in Guinea’s highly prospective Siguiri Basin and has grouped them into three projects – the Kouroussa Project, Mandiana Project and Konsolon Project. The permits are held through Volt’s 100% subsidiary Gold Republic Pty Ltd.
The Kouroussa Project comprises three permits, the Kouroussa, Kouroussa West and Fadougou permits. The Kouroussa and Kouroussa West permits border the PDI permit which was the subject of a discovery of high-grade gold mineralisation in April 2020. To the NE, the Kouroussa Permit borders the Kouroussa mine and the Fadougou permit is located 13km NE of the same mine.
The Konsolon Project constitutes one prospective permit. The permit includes multiple geochemical gold in soil anomalies identified by previous explorers but remains under explored.
The Mandiana Project comprises the highly prospective Nzima permit and Monebo permit. The Nzima permit borders the Nzima artisanal mine and is 15km SW of the 1.1Moz Tri-K Deposit owned by Managem.