Precious and base metals explorer Antipa Minerals Ltd (ASX: AZY) has seen its share price rise by more than nine percent on news that it hit intersections of more than 15 grams per tonne of gold through drilling of an initial six holes at its Minyari Dome Copper Gold Project in Western Australia.
At 12:11 pm AEST, the company’s shares were sitting at 1.2 cents, a rise of 9.09 percent since the market opened.
Antipa is carrying out a 71-hole program of (Phase 1) drilling at the project’s GEO-01 discovery – seeking to delineate a resource there – and these results were taken from reverse circulation (RC) drilling of 39 holes.
The first six holes showed mineralisation comprised of thick zones close to the surface, which indicates the potential for open pit mining of high-grade gold. Since the mineralisation is also open in all directions, Antipa has hinted at the possibility of gaining a maiden resource at the site.
In one hole, intersections included 66 metres at 1.4 grams per tonne gold and 0.04% copper from 118m down hole, including 6 metres at 1.9 grams per tonne and 0.11% copper from 118m down hole, 17 metres at 4.4 grams per tonne gold from 157m down hole, and within that, 4 metres at 15.5 grams per tonne of gold from 168 metres.
Managing Director Roger Mason said results had pointed the way to strong mineralisation at the GEO-01 discovery.
“Our Phase 1 CY2024 drill programme is off to a great start, with fantastic initial results returned from the first six holes of resource delineation drilling at GEO-01,” he said.
“These results show an increase in the thickness of the main zone of mineralisation.
“With GEO-01 open in most directions, it continues to shape up as a substantial shallow, maiden resource opportunity.”
The Minyari Dome Project is located south of Broome in the highly prospective mining territory of the Paterson Province, approximately 35km north of Newcrest’s Telfer gold-copper-silver mine.
In 2022, Antipa released an updated mineral resource estimate for the project, which comprised 1.8 million ounces of gold, 64,300 tonnes of copper, 584,000 ounces of silver and 11,100 tonnes of cobalt.