Orion Gold is a well-managed explorer with diverse commodity and project interests, incorporating the search for epithermal gold at its Connors Arc project in Queensland and nickel in WA’s Fraser Range province.
| Corporate Details |  |
| Status: Advanced Explorer | |
| Size: Small Cap | |
| Commodity Exposure: Gold | |
| Share Price: $0.02 | |
| 12-month Range: $0.017 – $0.046 | |
| Shares: 306m, Options: 43m | |
| Top 20: 71% | |
| Net Cash & Liquids: $1.1m | |
| Market Value: $6m |
| Key Parameters | Rating (✓out of 5) | Quarterly Statistics |
| Management Quality | ✓✓✓✓✓ | Q2 2015 Exploration Spend: $0.867m |
| Financial Security | ✓✓✓✓ | Q2 2015 Administration Spend: $0.107m |
| Project Quality | ✓✓✓✓✓ | Exploration Spend 89%, Admin Spend 11% |
| Exploration / Resource Potential | ✓✓✓✓✓ | Q3 2015 Forecast Exploration Spend: $0.35m |
| Project Risk | ✓✓✓✓✓ | Q3 2015 Forecast Admin. Spend: $0.25m |
Orion Gold is a strongly technically-focused exploration company, focused on acquiring, exploring and developing large tenement holdings or regional-scale mineral opportunities in world-class mineral provinces within. Accordingly, it has acquired projects in proven mineral provinces within Australia, including a substantial tenement holding within the Albany-Fraser Belt in WA, host to Australia’s two most significant discoveries of the last decade (the Tropicana Gold Deposit and the Nova nickel-copper-cobalt deposit).
Part of this tenement holding was acquired from entities associated with Mark Creasy, who is now a significant shareholder in Orion Gold. The project area was previously explored by Western Areas (ASX: WSA) who identified mafic-ultramafic intrusives within the project area, as well as nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE anomalies. Orion’s intensive, systematic exploration programs have successfully defined 34 targets to date via a combination of geological, geochemical and geophysical methods.
Orion Gold also maintains a large tenement package within the Connors Arc in Queensland, where a significant intermediate sulphidation, epithermal gold and silver system has been identified at Aurora Flats. The project lies 120km northwest of Rockhampton, situated between the active mining operations of Cracow (+2Moz produced) and the more recent Mt Carlton mine. The company is increasing its focus on this project, following promising reports from expert consultants and recent sampling activity.
Recent Activity
Veinglorious Prospect
Orion Gold has recently confirmed the potential of a newly-identified target area to the north of its Veinglorious prospect, which forms part of its 100%-owned Connors Arc Epithermal project in central Queensland. Surface grab samples have returned highly encouraging gold and silver results.
Systematic rock chip sampling has generated three samples returning assays greater than 100g/t silver, along with strongly-anomalous gold grades. One sample returned assays of 2.75g/t gold and 629g/t silver, which is an exceptional result for a sample from the upper levels of an epithermal system.
The graphic above shows high-resolution total magnetic intensity (TMI) ground magnetic data, with white circles indicating magnetic low anomalies correlating to epithermal vein systems. Also shown are mapped epithermal vein outcrops and silver results from rock-chip sampling.
Technical Significance
These anomalous results were returned from veining adjacent to distinct magnetic lows detected by a high-resolution ground magnetic survey. These discrete magnetic lows are now a compelling target for drill-testing. The latest results also provide further evidence of the scale of the Connors Arc Project and its potential to host a large-scale epithermal system. It represents a compelling regional exploration target.
Project Overview
The Connors Arc Project is located 180km from Rockhampton in central Queensland. The project area is located within a geological and structural setting very similar to other significant epithermal gold systems in Queensland – such as Cracow and Mt Carlton.
The identified system is of the same broad age (Permian‐Carboniferous) as many other intrusion‐related gold systems in Queensland. The key prospects are spatially associated with a large, magmatic hydrothermal system.
Recent fieldwork discovered two major vein swarms parallel to the epithermal vein system at the Veinglorious prospect, where drilling earlier this year confirmed the presence of significant silver mineralization. These additional discoveries confirmed the presence of a substantial epithermal system at Veinglorious, given the cumulative strike length of all veins mapped to be approximately 4.2km.
Results from systematic rock-chip sampling of these vein swarms have now been received with strongly anomalous gold and silver assays reported in a number of samples. Encouragingly, the majority of the anomalous samples were from the same vein segment immediately north of the Veinglorious prospect.
Five samples of the 39 taken from this vein swarm returned high-grade silver assays of greater than 100g/t (samples V202, V296, V310, V331 and V337), being levels at which silver mineralisation with gold as a by-product is of economic interest.
The western portion of this vein swarm also returned anomalous and mineralised gold assays with peak values of 2.75g/t gold in V337 and 0.97g/t gold in V331 (total of 12 samples taken). This vein exhibits a range of epithermal textures and vein forms including parallel stringers, vein breccia, massive-veining and stock-work over widths of up to 20 metres. Adularia is also present in discrete concentrations within the vein.
The geochemical data from these samples display the same elevated levels of Pb, Rb, Sb and Te – which have been noted in initial rock-chip samples taken from the “main” Veinglorious prospect. Certain samples were taken to test specific textures or areas within the vein to link the geochemical characteristics to the geological features observed, and to ascertain which fluid phases are present in individual veins or vein segments.
Following the discovery of the new vein outcrops, Orion carried out a further high-resolution ground magnetic survey to extend the coverage across the mapped extensions to the Veinglorious system. A number of significant magnetic low features have been identified both along strike from and parallel to the Veinglorious prospect.
A large volume of epithermal fluid flow has the effect of altering and de-magnetising the host rocks in proximity to the veins, resulting in anomalous lows that are detectable in processed magnetic data. With dips of approximately 75 degrees to the northwest, the newly mapped veins are notably steeper dipping than those drilled at the “main” Veinglorious prospect, indicating that the strong magnetic lows immediately north-west of samples V331-V337, as well as V084-V202, are prime targets for strongly altered rocks.
The pronounced magnetic low anomalies in these areas may be indicative of a larger volume fluid flow further down-dip in the vein set.
The initial surface geochemical survey was extended to close-off the anomaly at the southern end. The strength of this geochemical anomaly makes it a high-priority drilling target. The expanded survey has also highlighted the unusual orientation of this anomaly. It appears that the anomaly may follow the intersection of the “regional” NNE – SSW trend mapped throughout the Aurora Flats prospect and an ENE – WSW trend mapped in epithermal veining adjacent to the anomaly.
This second orientation appears to offset the “regional” trend in this area, and further investigation, including drill testing, will be carried out to confirm this apparent relationship. Current work includes mapping different vein textures in core and outcrop to correlate the gold-silver mineralisation intersected in drilling to specific textures and potentially map the different fluid phases present.
Summary
Previous results at Connors Arc had proven the existence of mineralised vein systems immediately below outcropping epithermal veins, as well as down-dip extensions of earlier concepts economic-grade samples – but economic-grade mineralization had proven elusive. Importantly, this is no longer the case following the latest sampling results. As a result, a drilling program has been designed to test the targets identified at the Veinglorious and Aurora Flats prospects and it is anticipated that a drilling rig will be mobilised to the project in the coming weeks. Accordingly, Orion Gold will remain firmly held in our Portfolio.
