Xanadu Mines Ltd (ASX: XAM) has intersected promising new zone of mineralisation outside the defined resources at the company’s Kharmagtai porphyry copper and gold project in the south Gobi region of Mongolia.
The new diamond drill hole, located to the immediate east of the Stockwork Hill deposit at Kharmagtai, has significantly increased the potential strike of the Stockwork Hill Deposit.
Chief Executive Officer, Dr Andrew Stewart, said diamond drill hole KHDDH526 represents a pivotal drill hole for Xanadu at the Kharmagtai project.
We have always believed that the high-grade tourmaline breccia at Stockwork Hill should extend to the east, but previous drilling had been unable to locate the eastern extensions of the mineralisation.
“KHDDH526 now confirms that mineralisation certainly extends beyond Billy’s Basalt Shear and may potentially extend all the way to the Sandstorm prospect over 1km away.
“These outstanding results support Xanadu’s interpretations that the porphyry-breccia complex at Kharmagtai has the potential to be a significant copper-gold system with similarities to other very strongly mineralised tourmaline breccia deposits globally”.
KHDDH526 was planned to extend the high-grade tourmaline breccia zone at Stockwork Hill to the east of Billy’s Basalt Shear, the previous limit to mineralisation.
It intersected 117m @ 0.68% Cu and 0.58g/t Au from 555m including 62.8m @ 1.16% Cu and 1.04g/t Au from 607m.
Dr Stewart said three key observations highlighted the potential for a significantly larger zone of tourmaline breccia at Stockwork Hill.
The first of these was that mineralisation appeared to be offset by Billy’s Basalt Shear, a medium scale structure against which previously drilled mineralisation abuts. Structural models suggested this fault had an offset of less than 100m and pointed to the tourmaline breccia south and east of previous drilling.
The second observation was that the tourmaline breccia correlates with a discrete zone of magnetic destruction. This corridor of magnetic destruction extends some 1,000m to the Sandstorm Prospect.
Finally, previous shallow drilling between Stockwork Hill and Sandstorm had encountered zones of tourmaline breccia with sulphide mineralisation reminiscent of the top of the known body of tourmaline breccia at Stockwork Hill.