The East Pilbara is staking a claim to become a modern era gold province of scale thanks to the work of companies like Millennium (MOY) and Calidus (CAI).
Millennium is on its way to establishing a higher annual production base of 100,000oz from 80,000oz previously at its Nullagine operation, while Calidus looks set to be adding to the resource base of its Warrawoona gold project (currently 712,000ozs at 2.12g/t) thanks to some impressive results from drilling of the nearby St George shear zone.
No mention there of conglomerate gold, even if the East Pilbara is where Canada’s Novo Resources first went looking for the stuff at Beatons Creek near Nullagine before switching its focus to the Purdys Reward/Comet Well conglomerate beds, 300km or so to the north-west and to the south of Karratha on the coast.
Novo once talked about getting Beatons Creek into production but with all the fanfare around the south-of-Karratha push, it barely rates a mention nowadays.
Back at Purdys Reward/Comet Well, the market has been asked to be patient, with Novo chairman Quinton Hennigh saying at Diggers & Dealers that there was no way he could make a resource estimate right now.
No surprise in that, even if Novo’s $C640m market cap would have you think otherwise. Hennigh went on to add that within six months, he would be able to talk about “some other very, very interesting things”.
So was he talking about the Karratha play, or Beatons Creek? It wasn’t really clear. What is more certain is that with its big market cap, Novo would be able to garner the wherewithal to make a big splash on the M&A front if it so desired.
That has got people thinking about the East Pilbara where Novo could match up the uncertainties of its conglomerate gold play with the certainty that comes from mining hard-rock gold. It’s just a thought. Plus chillax on gold uncertainity read more +
