Benz Mining Corp. (TSXV:BZ, ASX:BNZ) has sighted visible gold in drillhole EM21-228, completed earlier on in the drilling season, in the Mine Horizon at D Zone at the Eastmain Project in Quebec, Canada.
At a depth of 885.0m below surface, the gold bearing was identified as 21 small (submillimetric) specs of visible gold have been identified by the logging geologists at 942.6m depth (core).
“This is an excellent result. Once again, we prove that our targeting method is extremely well suited to the style of mineralisation seen at Eastmain. We are still working through a large gold system with multiple high grade gold occurrences identified over 10km of strike,” CEO, Xavier Braud, said.
“We are very fortunate to have an exploration technique such as electromagnetics to target high-grade gold mineralisation.
“We now have enough confidence in our technique to drill 1,000m holes or broad 100m step outs and consistently hit gold mineralisation.
“Every conductor we have hit to date has intersected mineralisation making EM a great tool for rapidly assessing where the best parts of the gold system may be.
“After 18 months of drilling, we still have a multitude of targets to test, highlighting that we may not have drilled the best of them yet.”
D Zone Drilling
D Zone is a zone of gold mineralisation sitting approximately 750m from the existing 376,000oz resource at Eastmain.
Shallow mineralisation was identified by previous explorers in the late 1980’s by rock chip sampling and shallow drilling which intersected zones of high-grade gold mineralisation (2.2m at 18.1 g/t Au). Continuity of mineralisation was not sufficiently established and the area was left without any further drilling since the late 1980’s.
Via the use of electromagnetics in late 2020, Benz identified that previous drilling had only intercepted a small part of the system. Large conductive zones outside the previous drilling were identified in 2020 and 2021 with potential to significantly increase the scale of this mineralisation.
The conductors identified in D Zone via FLEM and DHEM underlined a prospective area approximately 500m x 1,100m, which is comparable to the footprint covered by the existing 376,000oz resource at A-B-C Zones.
CEO, Xavier Braud, said Benz has chosen a more targeted exploration approach initially testing the scale of the mineralised system before committing to tighter spaced resource definition drilling.
“In the past 18 months, all the drilling completed by the company has been extensional in nature. Benz is determined not to drill any ‘verification holes’, ‘twin holes’ or other very closed spaced holes into known mineralisation, sometimes referred to as ‘director’s specials.
“A 1,000m hole was perfectly justified because we knew how successful our direct detection method has been.”
The Eastmain Gold Project, situated on the Upper Eastmain Greenstone Belt in Quebec, Canada, currently hosts a NI 43-101 and JORC (2012) compliant resource of 376,000oz at 7.9gpt gold (Indicated: 236,500oz at 8.2gtp gold, Inferred: 139,300oz at 7.5gtp gold). The existing gold mineralisation is associated with 15-20% semi-massive to massive pyrrhotite, pyrite and chalcopyrite in highly deformed and altered rocks making it amenable to detection using electromagnetic techniques.
Multiple gold occurrences have been identified by previous explorers over a 10km long zone along strike from the Eastmain Mine with very limited but highly encouraging testing outside the existing resource area.
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