South Pacific Metals has commenced its maiden drilling program at the highly prospective Ontenu Northeast prospect within its Osena project area in Eastern Highlands province.
The project lies within a major northeast-southwest corridor known as the Kainantu transfer zone. This corridor also hosts the Kainantu gold-copper mine, operated by K92 Mining.
South Pacific has previously conducted rock chip assay testing on the site, with grades of up to 13.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 388 g/t silver discovered, but the area has not been drilled before.
The drilling will test whether the northwest trending mineralised structures discovered in September and October are surface expressions of deeper epithermal gold copper veins. This would be similar to the veins currently being mined by K92 at its Kora and Judd deposits.
The company expects to drill between four and six holes, for a total of about 1500m.
South Pacific chief executive officer Timo Jauristo said the maiden drill program for Ontenu NE would mark a major milestone for the company and the project.
“The whole team is excited to start drilling these holes, aimed at testing the deeper parts of these mineralised structures for high-grade epithermal gold-copper veins,” he said. “The first drill hole is planned to intersect several of these structures at depths between 100m to 250m.
“The remainder of the program will further test this structure as well as some of the other mineralised structures.”
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