South Africa police standoff with illegal gold miners escalates
The police sealed off access to the Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein several weeks ago to deny the miners access to food and other essentials.
Great Bear Resources has released new assay data for three drillholes completed on section 19925 as the company moves towards a tighter drill spacing along the LP fault at its Dixie gold project in Red Lake, Ontario.
The drill highlights in the release include 18.2 metres of 13.38 g/t gold from bedrock surface; and 16.5 metres of 4.9 g/t gold and 57 metres of 4.25 g/t gold from two successive intervals in another drillhole.
“In this release we provide highly detailed individual assay level data from shallow drill holes on one cross section at three different scales,” Chris Taylor, Great Bear’s president and CEO, said in a release. “With tighter drilling, we have observed the same exceptional gold zone continuity at 25-metre drill spacing, both along strike and vertically, as we previously observed at 100 – 200 metre spacing. By the end of 2021 we are planning to have completed approximately 100 drill sections similar to the one contained in this release, consisting of over 400 drill holes in total.”
This year, the company plans to drill 110,000 metres at the site
Taylor added that this drilling is planned for a gold zone that covers more than 4 km of strike, remains open and starts at surface.
The LP fault is interpreted to cover up to 18 km of strike at Dixie. This structure features high-grade disseminated gold with moderate and lower grade envelopes. The 91.4-sq.-km property also includes high-grade gold in quartz veins and silica-sulphide replacement zones at the Dixie Limb, Arrow and Hinge zones.
This year, the company plans to drill 110,000 metres at the site, with approximately 90% of this budget allocated towards definition drilling.
Metallurgical test results, released in January and completed on Dixie Limb zone material, suggest gold recoveries of 88% to 97.5% based on conventional cyanidation bottle roll leach testing. Gold recovery results from the LP fault are expected over the coming months.
Also in January, Great Bear announced a $70-million bought deal of flow-through and common shares (upsized from $37 million).
(This article first appeared in the Canadian Mining Journal)
