Drilling Action Accelerating After Promising Success
Galena Mining Ltd (ASX: G1A) has drilled its best high-grade lead-silver drill-hole ever at the Abra Base Metals Project in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia
The record hole based on combined cumulative thickness and grade included:
- 17.5m at 9.6% lead and 34g/t silverfrom 266.2m
- 20.9m at 7.3% lead and 20g/t silverfrom 288.1
- 35.5m at 15.1% lead and 22g/t silverfrom 321.8m
- 8.9m at 17.1% lead and 26g/t silverfrom 366.2m
“We’re astounded at the success of hole AB147 in targeting a potential ‘metal rich’ combination of grade and thickness on the northern part of the eastern limb of Abra’s Indicated Resouce area, which is shallow and close to the current plan for early decline infrastructure,” Managing Director, Alex Molyneux, said.
“We have added a number of follow-up holes around AB147 to the drilling program with the intention to bring this area into the early years of the mine plan as an optimisation.”
25 diamond core drill-holes (AB144 to AB168) for 10,646 cumulative linear metres of the 2020 Abra Drilling Programme have been completed so far. Albeit, this release only includes assays from the first five holes due to the slow progress in receiving assays.
Mr Molyneux said the programme was initially planned to consist of approximately 15,000 metres to 18,000 metres of drilling, with three objectives: lead-silver orebody infill; drilling into selected prospective ‘metal rich’ zones for potential life of mine plan optimisation; and gold-copper exploration.
The holes completed to date have been targeting the first two objectives, with the plan to address the third objective later in the programme.
Drill-hole AB147 encountered a number of outstanding significant intersections reaching a combined down-hole thickness of 86.1 metres.
Mr Molyneux said the drill-hole indicates the existence of a potentially mineable domain approximately 30 metres closer to the surface than the shallowest currently planned mining zone. The relative shallowness of this area and proximity to early decline development makes it a target for inclusion in the early years of the mine plan as an optimisation.
Based on the success of drill-hole AB147, an additional seven drill-holes have been added to the 2020 Abra Drilling Program in that area and its currently likely the overall program could exceed 22,000 metres.
There are now three drill-rigs operating at Abra with the capacity to drill a cumulative 1,400-1,800m per week. Assays have taken some time because drilling initially commenced with one drill-rig only and it took some weeks to ramp-up to three rigs due to drill-rig availability.
Assays have also been slower to be received than for past programs due to capacity issues with sample logistics operators and lab backlogs.
