Great Basin upbeat on Hollister progress
miningweekly.com
By: Creamer Media Reporter
20th April 2009
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Gold exploration and development company Great Basin Gold, of Vancouver, reported on Monday that geological modelling and mineral resource estimation of its Hollister property in Nevada, in the US, was advancing.
The Toronto-listed company said that exploration drilling programmes continued to encounter high-grade intersections on the Clementine and Gwenivere vein systems, as well as further encouraging intersections from the Hatter Graben veins to the east of the Hollister development.
"Good progress continues to be made with the planned exploration programs of the Hollister Development Block and the Hatter Graben discovery area,” said Great Basin president and CEO Ferdi Dippenaar.
The underground drilling was providing more information about the strike and vertical continuity of the vein systems, Great Basin said in a statement.
The Hollister mineral system currently comprised 24 discrete east-west striking
subvertical veins, which constitute the Clementine and Gwenivere groups. The system is still open along strike, at depth, and in areas up to and above the Ordovician/Tertiary Unconformity.
An estimated 26 underground boreholes were completed, of which 15 were for exploration, seven targeted the Gwenivere system and four tested the Clementine system.
“Our underground exploration drilling continues to prove strike and depth extensions to the Hollister system. The drilling eastwards towards the Hatter system is also indicating new intermediary zones of mineralisation between the Hollister and Hatter systems,” said Dippenaar.
“The Hatter system will be subject to follow-up drilling, specifically designed to ascertain the lateral and depth continuity of the vein system. The geological team is also making good progress unraveling structural controls to the mineralisation in general, and future drilling will continue to test the predictive model being developed.”
The surface drilling programme is focusing on the Hatter Graben target, located about 1 667 m east of the Clementine-Gwenivere vein cluster. The geology of the area is highlighted by a number of North/Northwest-South/Southeast and E-W structures, as well as Eocene to Tertiary aged intermediate to felsic intrusive rocks.
However, a number of narrow and discrete vein intersections support an East-West trending vein swarm not unlike the Clementine-Gwenivere system. The Hatter Graben target area now has a strike extent of about 1 400 m and a width of up to 400 m, which is of similar extent to the Hollister vein system.
Great Basin noted that the mineralised zones were marked by banded quartz veins with naumannite, bladed quartz with visible gold and naumannite, and brecciation zones with sulphidation and silicification.
A follow up drill program targeting this area has been designed.
“The Hollister development project still has significant exploration potential on the surrounding claim areas. A total of 16 targets have been identified for future exploration. All the project geospatial data from historic and current exploration is in the process of being collated, reviewed and structural targets reassessed and priority ranked.”
The company added that the development of a structural model for the area is seen as an important component to predicting both Tertiary and Ordovician hosted mineralisation. |
