Alkane Resources looks like it is moving closer to confirming it has a monster porphyry gold copper prospect smack bang in the heart of the huge central NSW minerals province.
It’s an area of NSW where world class mines seem to be created over time – Cowal, Cadia, Northparkes are a trio of giants with already long lives as major mining operations.
Alkane has uncovered up to half a dozen areas of interest in the region (and pushed its productive Tomingley gold mine to the sidelines so far as future prospects are concerned).
It has set the end of this year as the deadline for a resource update for the most likely prospects in the region – it has already indicated reserves of well over 800 million tonnes of copper and gold mineralisation.
Alkane’s area of interest is known as the Northern Molong Porphyry Project where it has found mineralised areas of interest at prospects named Kaiser, through Korridor and Boda, down to Boda Two and Boda Three.
Tiddler Magmatic’s has tenements than effectively surround Alkane’s Boda gold-copper discovery while it also holds a strategic position in the Parkes Fault Zone, with its Myall and Parkes projects, immediately north and south of Alkane’s Tomingley Gold Operations.
For the second time in less than a month Alkane this week revealed further results from its drilling program at the Northern Molong Project.
Alkane said the program extends over three kilometres from Kaiser, through Korridor and Boda, down to Boda Two and Boda Three. “The Company believes this system has the potential to be a large, tier one gold-copper project,” Alkane said in its ASX filing.
Alkane’s NMPP covers an area of 115 square kilometres and is centred about 20km north of Wellington and about 35km east of Dubbo in the central west of NSW.
The project covers a section of the northern Molong volcanic belt, which is highly prospective for large-scale porphyry gold-copper deposits, and the 3 kilometres covering the Kaiser through Korridor and three Boda prospects are within a 15-kilometre northwest trending corridor.
Alkane first identified significant porphyry-style gold-copper mineralisation at the prospect in September 2019.
In May last year, Alkane revealed a maiden inferred resource estimate for Boda of 624 million tonnes (Mt) at 0.51 grams per tonne (g/t) gold equivalent (AuEq) for 10.1-million- gold equivalent-ounce resource (5.21 million ounces of gold, 900,000 tonnes of copper).
In February of this year, Alkane revealed a first ever resource figure for the Kaiser prospect of 270 million tonnes grading at 0.54g/t gold equivalent for 4.7 million oz gold equivalent (480,000 tonnes of copper and 2.05 million ounces of gold).
That was 7.26 million ounces of gold and nearly 1.4 million tonnes of copper, making it a top tier discovery.
Alkane has been drilling adjacent prospects such as Kaiser and Korridor as it looks to complete updated resource estimates for Boda and Kaiser in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Now, Alkane has released assay results confirming extensive mineralisation at Boda Two which sits within the Boda project.
“Assay results were received from diamond core and RC drilling at Boda Two confirming zones of high-grade gold-pyrite-cemented breccia mineralisation within extensive gold-copper porphyry mineralisation,” the company told the ASX this week.
Results included diamond core intercepts in one hole where it found 438 metres at 0.6g/t gold equivalent (0.38g/t gold, 0.15 per cent copper) from 842 metres, which included 5 metres at 2.22g/t gold equivalent (1.89g/t gold, 0.25 per cent copper).
“These early results from the most recent phase of drilling at Boda Two confirm that large-scale mineralisation continues to extend to the south of Boda,” Alkane CEO Nic Earner said in the statement to the ASX.
“In addition, it appears that there are higher-grade areas within the Boda Two system.
“These results are especially encouraging when viewed in combination with the recent maiden Kaiser resource to the north-west of the existing Boda resource.
“As we look to update and grow the collective resource base in and around Boda through the rest of 2023, it is exciting to have both a growing resource in Kaiser and Boda Two building extensive mineralisation to the south.”
Alkane has two high-capacity diamond core drilling rigs are currently in operation in the Boda area and as ground access conditions improve, two additional high-capacity RC drill rigs are expected to mobilise over the coming month.
From the latest announcement and the one late February, it is easy to see the company confirming more than a billion tonnes of resource and possibly more if other prospects are drilled later this year.
And then there is the prospect of Magmatic’s prospects nearby, especially the Corvette gold copper mineralised area.
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Intriguingly, Alkane last month bought exploration areas north and south of the Boda/Kaiser discoveries. The seller was Sandfire Resources which took $1.9 million worth of Alkane shares as payment).
The purchases allow Alkane to ‘top and tail’ some of the most prospective areas for copper gold mineralisation in the country, judging by the major mines already the area (Northparkes, Cowal, Cadia) and other discoveries, such as Magmatic’s Wellington North’s gold copper prospect adjacent to the Boda find of Alkane.
Magmatic also has the promising Corvette find northeast of Alkane’s small but profitable Tomingley gold mine.
The northern area, called “Comobella North” is now included into the Northern Molong Porphyry Project (NMPP) and is positioned adjacent and north of the NMPP tenement group and the five areas of interest (including Boda and Kaiser).
“Comobella North covers 64 kilometres “of the same volcanics and intrusives that host the Boda and Kaiser Inferred Resources (total resources around 15 million oz gold equivalent). Comobella North represents a strategic acquisition by Alkane who now owns tenure covering the entire 15 km prospective northwest trending Boda-Kaiser corridor.”
‘The Southern Junee Porphyry Project (SJPP) is a group of tenements covering 235 kolimeters of the southern extension of the Junee-Narromine Volcanic Belt of the Macquarie Arc. The geology comprises of buried intrusive complexes of shoshonitic (alkalic) affinity in a similar geological setting as at the world class Northparkes copper- gold mine.”
Alkane said it “believes that the extensive geological knowledge accumulated by the discovery and evaluation of the Boda-Kaiser porphyry system will enable cost effective evaluation of these new prospective areas.”
