Ongoing resource drilling at ASX- and LSE-listed Resolute Mining’s Tabakoroni Underground and Syama North deposits, in Mali, continues to deliver “outstanding results” with high-grade sulphide gold intersections from infill and extensional diamond drilling undertaken this calendar year.
Diamond drilling this year has been concentrated on both converting the higher-grade inferred resources to the indicated category and on expanding the footprint of the high-grade zone, the company said on August 25, enthusing that the extensional drilling has been “extremely successful” with multiple, very high-grade intersections returned from drilling down dip and outside the current resource model.
These drill results extend the high-grade zone down dip by a further 150 m and it is expected that the mineral resources will be significantly increased when next estimated later this year.
The drilling programme for the remainder of this year will continue to infill and expand the high-grade mineralisation underneath the South pit, Resolute said.
Additional drill density of 50 m centres will be required to classify this new zone as indicated resources and owing to the high-grade nature and the shallow location of this zone. Resolute said it expected underground mining activities to be focused on this zone in the early years of production.
Oxide exploration at Syama North, meanwhile, has returned positive results from shallow drilling, supporting the return to openpit mining late this year.
BACKGROUND
Drilling in late 2020 intersected very high-grade mineralisation underneath the South oxide pit at Tabakoroni, where the South pit was mined in 2018 and 2019, and produced around 50 000 oz at an average grade of 1.7 g/t.
A deeper step-out hole below the pit, TARD777, intersected 5 m at 116.3 g/t of gold from 222 m which was announced in October last year.
Resolute on August 25 said this intersection led to a focus on evaluating this zone in addition to the mineralisation underneath the Namakan and Northern pits, and that subsequent drilling expanded this new zone and led to a revised mineral resource estimation in January revealing a large increase in underground resources, which currently stand at 8.1-million tonnes at 4.8 g/t, containing 1.3-million ounces.