The Conversation (0)
Siren Gold Limited (ASX: SNG) (Siren or the Company) is pleased to announce a Maiden JORC (2012) Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Big River Gold Project in New Zealand.
Highlights
- The Big River gold project consists of 6 identified gold mineralised shoots across more than 500m of strike, with potential to discover additional high-grade shoots.
- Maiden 105koz Resource at 3.94g/t Au defined from 2 of these 6 shoots (A2 Shoot and Shoot 4)
- Big River deposit remains open in all directions with significant potential for increased gold resources from additional exploration drilling.
- Gold soil geochemistry shows large untested anomalies at Big River mine and an untested 3km long anomaly from the Golden Hill prospect to St George in the south.
- Siren’s Global Mineral Resource now stands at 1.1Moz at 3.1g/t Au (100% basis).
Table 1 Updated Big River Mineral Resource Estimate
Table 2 Global Resource Estimate at a 1.5g/t Au cut-off (100% basis)
Background
The Big River project (comprised of Exploration Permit 60448) is located ~15 kms SE of Reefton. The project overlays the areas of the historic Big River Mine which produced ~136,000 oz of gold at an average recovered grade of 34g/t between 1880 and 1942 (Figure 1).
The historic underground mine workings have been modelled in 3D and this, coupled with historic mine reports, shows that four main ore shoots were mined around the Sunderland anticline (Figure 2). Shoot 1 was mined to Level 4, Shoot 2 to Level 6, Shoot 3 to Level 12 and Shoot 4 to Level 7, when the mine closed in 1942. Two new potential shoots, the A2 and Prima Donna, are located east and west of the Big River mine. The A2 shoot, Big River Mine and Prima Donna shoot combined cover a strike length of around 500m, which is overlaid by anomalous gold and arsenic soil geochemistry.
Diamond drilling commenced at the Big River project in 2011 when OceanaGold Limited (OGL) drilled 26 holes for a total of 5,032.6m. Siren commenced drilling in October 2020 and initially drilled 16 holes for a total of 2,743m.
Drilling was focused on Shoots 4 and A2. Previous drillhole results that intersected Shoot 4 include BR03 (2m @ 12.1g/t Au), BR04 (4m @ 4.4g/t Au from 128m and 6.6m @ 21.4g/t Au from 136m), BR09 (3m @ 18.5g/t Au from 147m and 4m @ 7.8g/t Au from 158m), BR12 (3m @ 5.4g/t Au from 170m and 3m @ 2.0g/t Au from 205m), BR27 (6m @ 5.1g/t Au), BR34 (5.9m @ 4.1g/t Au) and BR35 (6.3m @ 3.4g/t Au from 374.8m).
The A2 shoot is in a second anticline 200m to the west of the Sunderland anticline that hosts the Big River mine. Mapping and channel sampling identified outcropping quartz reef up to 1m thick surrounded by sulphide-rich sediments containing lenses of massive sulphide in the footwall. Channel sampling indicates that the quartz reef is relatively low grade, but the footwall mineralisation assayed up to 11g/t Au. Seven shallow diamond holes drilled into the A2 Shoot tested 100m along strike to a depth of around 25-50m. Drillhole BR20 intersected 5.0m @ 4.2g/t Au from 24m and BR31 intersected 3.4m @ 2.5g/t Au from 41m. BR22 - BR24 were drilled on a second structure 30m to the west. These holes intersected a 10m wide zone with lower grade gold mineralisation but with the same high arsenic and sulphur mineralisation. BRDDH023 has very high sulphur, averaging 10.9% over 8m, with a high of 36% over 1m. These results are encouraging and indicate a strongly mineralised system near surface.
The deeper drilling in the A2 Shoot indicates that the shoot has a slightly shallower plunge than previously interpreted and that drillholes BR40 and BR41 intersected the footwall. Drillholes BR37 (5.2m @ 6.3g/t Au from 213m), BR41 (6m @ 1.5g/t Au from 252m) and BR39 (10m @ 1.2g/t Au from 271m, including 3m @ 2.5g/t Au) have extended the A2 Shoot to around 250m below the surface.
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