Tennant Minerals Limited (ASX: TMS) has commenced a new reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling programme at Bluebird in Australia’s Northern Territory.
The programme is looking to significantly expand the footprint of the high-grade copper-gold discovery located within the company’s wholly-owned Barkly Project.
New Stage 3 Drilling Programme
The new Stage 3 programme will build on previous drilling at Bluebird by the company, which led to the discovery of high-grade copper and gold mineralization over a 240m strike length and to a depth of more than 250m. Bluebird is a “blind” discovery hidden beneath about 80m of weathered saprolite and remains completely open in all directions.
The programme will include up to 5,000m of RC and diamond drilling which will test the shallow plunging thick and high-grade gold and copper zone extending west and east of Bluebird, as well as targeting projected extensions at depth.
The initial holes will target immediate extensions of the high-grade copper and bonanza gold zones to the west of the intersections in the recently completed Stage 2 programme, which included:
- BBDD0018: 30.5m @6.2% Cu, 6.8g/t Au from 153.6m incl. 17.8m @5.2% Cu, 11.5g/t Au
- BBDD0012: 63m @2.1% Cu, 4.6g/t Au from 153m incl. 27.55m @3.6% Cu, 10.0g/t Au, and,
- BBDD0021: 24m @0.66% Cu, 11.8g/t Au from 161m incl. 5.7m @0.74% Cu, 49.3g/t Au
The Stage 3 programme will also include deeper drilling below the high-grade copper and gold intersections in BBDD0025 (16.45m @3.05% Cu, 2.31g/t Au) and BBDD0015 (17.8m @3.7% Cu, 0.34g/t Au) for a repeat of the thick dilational high-grade zone at depth.
Significant New IP Target Identified
Inversion modelling of initial results from a major induced polarization (IP) geophysical survey completed by Planetary Geophysics has identified a strongly-conductive (low-resistivity) anomaly centred 160m to the east of Bluebird.
This new step-out IP target is more highly conductive than the main Bluebird zone, and thus represents a potential repeat of the high-grade copper-gold discovery, at a similar shallow depth.
As a result, the scope of the Stage 3 drilling programme has now been expanded to include drilling of this new IP target, which is strongly developed from around 80m below surface and indicates that Bluebird and the new target zone occupy a large, doubly-plunging, dilational zone extending for over 500m strike length.
Other targets to the west of Bluebird, within the 2.5km Bluebird-Perseverance Corridor were identified based on inversion modelling of gravity, magnetics and the initial IP profiles carried out in 20227. Further IP profiles have now been generated across the entire corridor and are currently being modelled to define additional priority targets.
Initial shallow drilling of selected targets within the corridor intersected mineralized structures above interpreted ironstone-hosted copper-gold zones.
For further information please visit: https://tennantminerals.com/
