The ~900km² contiguous tenement package is situated on the western shores of Lake Carey, ~ 50km from Laverton.
Iceni Gold Ltd. (ICL:ASX) has built up an immense database over most of this area using CSIRO UFF+ soil sampling geochemistry and a wide range of geophysical technologies.
These surveys, together with substantial on-ground fieldwork, have identified important regional structures, numerous anomalous outcrops, and in excess of 1,200 nuggets.
The nuggets are very high-grade geochem samples, and their presence and distribution, together with geophysical and structural interpretations, have strongly supported the likelihood of nearby large-scale and high-grade mineralisation in a number Iceni's Target Areas.
Key Points
- Single area focus company
- Well located 900km2 of contiguous tenements
- Numerous prospects in 8 Target Areas
- AU$21m spent to date accumulating an immense amount of data through
• 17,000m Diamond Drilling
• 43,000m Air Core Drilling
• 15,000 UFF+ samples
• 8,000 Rock Chips
• +1,200 Nuggets Discovered
• 31.5 line kms of Seismic Line
- 12 large geo chem anomalies discovered (6 gold, 4 PGM -Nickel, and 2 Lithium)
- 15km long gold anomaly identified at Guyer Shear
- High-grade (+18kg/t!) mineralized outcrop recorded at Everleigh Well
- Multi-million oz targets developed
- Active 20,000m Phase 3 drilling program now underway
- 3,000m Guyer
- 4,000m Everleigh Well
- 2,500m Breakaway Well
- ~2,000m Hage's Bore
- ~2,000m Goose Well
- ~1,000, Monument
- Follow-up drilling planned in 2024 post assays
- AU$2.7m funding completed
- Market cap A$14m on 240m shares @ AU$0.058
Unique Exploration Company
Iceni Gold is a unique exploration company that has professionally explored some highly prospective geology between the major gold centers of Leonora and Laverton.
An immense amount of data has been collected and analyzed, and the results have been discussed with industry leaders as consultants.
Iceni Gold is now funded to embark on the next phase of activity to funnel this data and its conclusions into activities that should lead to the outlining of large mineral deposits and the establishment of gold resources.
Iceni has recognized that the size of the anomalies and the data recovered to date show the potential for a number of multi-million oz gold deposits, starting with Guyer North and Everleigh Well.
Other targets are not far behind in development.
Iceni's tenements covering over 900km2 have been aggregated over the past six years to the west of Lake Carey and within eyesight of major gold mines like Granny Smith, Wallaby, and Sunrise Dam.
Murrin Murrin nickel laterites and Mt Morgans gold mines are to the north, and Gwalia and Apollo Hill gold deposits are to the west.
The area has been only sparsely explored due to thick surface cover and prior drilling had an average depth of just 30m.
The geology is mixed with intrusives, volcanic, and some sediments.
Iceni Gold is searching for deposits of
- Intrusion Related Gold
- Orogenic Lode Gold
- VMS styles
Examples of these deposits are widespread in the Leonora-Laverton areas.
Significantly, Iceni Gold has discovered two important splay structures, the Castlemaine Fault and the Guyer Shear, that have great promise as hosting significant gold deposits.
The AU$21m expenditure has covered seismic and other geophysics and follow-up AC, RC, and diamond drilling on targets identified by those 15,000UFF+ geochem samples.
ICL has also been boosted by the discovery of over 1,200 high-grade geo chem samples in the form of gold nuggets at four of the key prospects:-
- Guyer Shear,
- Everleigh Well,
- Claypan and
- Goose Well.
These are valuable in providing gold chemistry, and their shapes and metallic makeup are indicators of nearby primary sources.
Numerous prospects have been identified to date by geochem and geophysics in 8 Target Areas.
ICL's application of the CSIRO's UFF+ geochem sampling technique (focuses on ultra-fine clay fractions) has resulted in 12 new anomalies.
Six New Gold Anomalies
- Everleigh Well 5km
- Crossroads 2.5km
- East Well 5km
- Breakaway Well 5km
- Burge's Bore 1.5km
- Granite Bore North 2km
Four new PGM-Ni Anomalies have been defined, noting 3 Nickel Mines within 50km radius, and will be drilled in 2024.
- Christmas Gift 2.5km
- Granite Bore West 4km
- Granite Bore South 1.5km
- Bell Bird 4.5km
Currently, the two main opportunities for Iceni have been defined at
- Guyer in the east, and
- Everleigh in the centre
But there are also
- Claypan in the north
- With Breakaway Well in the southwest
- is also offering near-term greenfields exploration potential in 2024.
Guyer Prospect Area
The Guyer Area has several prospects of considerable interest, with the 15km long zone exhibiting outstanding anomalies.
Persistent geochem highs, exposed BIF (banded iron formation), gold-bearing rock chips, gold encountered in AC drilling, and numerous gold nuggets define targets for multimillion oz gold deposits.
Iceni Gold has defined three zones in the 15km of Guyer Shear on the tenements.
- North (and North West)
- Central
- South
Guyer North is particularly attractive.
This Guyer North Zone had a large 7km gold geochem anomaly, and Iceni has found mineralized outcrops grading up to 18g/t.
Iceni was also able to recover > 800 gold nuggets over a 5km strike.
Gold nuggets have been found on either side of the Guyer Ridge, running along the center of the major gold anomaly, but more recently, a large number of nuggets have been discovered along the crest of the ridge.
These nuggets on the crest are unlikely to have been transported and are highly likely to have come from rocks extending immediately below.
This occurrence is very positive for a potential mineralized body to exist here at quite shallow depths.
Follow-up AC drilling within the Guyer Shear and along the contact with the important Danjo Granite encountered encouraging anomalous gold mineralization.
Iceni Gold has now undertaken a first pass 3,000m RC drilling program to test all these high-quality targets.
Drilling at Guyer North (West) has encountered strong alterations, with assays awaited.
The rifts and dilation zones within the Guyer Shear are offering potential gold traps, and the gold anomalies, including gold nuggets, are providing strong technical evidence.
It is also important to recognize the scale here.
The gold anomaly in this Guyer North extends 5km N-S.
The BIF outcrop extends 7km.
Some numbers give the potential mineralized zone just for Guyer North and contained oz @ 1.5g/t.
Conceptual only.
On the basis of the work done to date it is not unreasonable to consider this is a high probability gold mineralisation target in a highly mineralised region.
Assuming 4,000m, 3,000m, or 2,000m strike 200m or 400m depth and 10m or 20m mineralisation width.
Gold grade is 1.5g/t, and SG is 2.8. Rock chips from mineralized outcrop are up to 129g/t, and the nuggets would indicate several oz per tonne, so 1.5g/t is reasonable. The range is 0.6-4.5moz.
Further work will be undertaken at Guyer Central and Guyer South.
Everleigh Well
Everleigh is more complicated.
The Everleigh Well target area is located centrally within the 14 Mile Well Project, on a 30km segment of the Castlemaine Fault.
This fault continues N-S through much of the14-mile well tenements and has been a significant focus area for the occurrence of hydrothermal activity and mineralization.
At Everleigh, a number of targets are coincident and were developed using different exploration techniques, including:
- FMD21 (geophysics),
- EW27 (geophysics),
- CSA04 (geology) and
- 14UF009 (geochemistry).
The target area formed part of the historic Redcastle gold mining center discovered in 1894.
This Castlemaine Fault is a splay off the regionally important Celia-Claypan Fault Zone, which is associated with many gold deposits and is seen to be a major source of mineralising fluids in the ICL tenements.
This target has some historic workings; numerous nuggets have been found, and an outcropping high-grade vein (Christmas Gift) produced assay results that included a sample running >18kg/t.
Accessing these old workings provided evidence of vein orientation that aligned with the overlying geochem anomaly.
Iceni has carried out geo chem, magnetics, Deep Ground Penetrating Radar (DGPR), and seismic surveys to better understand the geology and structure of the Everleigh Target Area.
The results were incorporated into an integrated 3D model.
The model has identified several higher-grade gold mineralization zones in metavolcanics that seem to have been fed from a buried magnetic dolerite intrusion and the Castlemaine Fault.
The scale of Everleigh Well targets is over several kilometers. Five targets have already been defined. The model does not yet give the continuity of the Guyer North prospects, but the potential is there for cumulative multi-million oz deposits.
Iceni had drilled diamond holes to test the character of the Castlemaine Fault.
Low-grade gold mineralization was encountered over much of the 900m length of this hole.
This was very encouraging.
Claypan Target Area
This Target Area is located on the Celia-Claypan Fault which regionally has provided conduits for mineralizing fluids flow.
A. VMS Target UF14014 Anomaly
A large 2km and 500m soil anomaly (UF14014) with strong anomalous gold has been located here, and a ~2oz gold nugget (the largest yet found by Iceni at 14 Mile Well Project) was recovered in an area reported to have has similar large nugget finds.
The nugget is high-purity gold (99.4%), suggesting it is a supergene nugget and one that has been transported.
The Claypan gold soil anomaly (14UF014) correlates well with a high silica chert/BIF unit within a felsic to intermediate volcaniclastic sequence, which are typical of VMS stratigraphy.
AC and diamond drilling by ICL in 2022 encountered gold anomalies and strong alterations in the volcanoclastics that were associated with sulphidic BIF intervals.
Iceni considers this to be the right geological environment to host a VMS deposit, and the anomaly and the rock types support this exploration model.
Moreover, nearby economic VMS deposits are at Teutonic Bore (north of Leonora) and Anaconda (7kms west of the 14 Mile Well project).
The stratigraphy that hosts the Anaconda Camp is interpreted to extend to the east and folds around the north of the Danjo Granite through into the Claypan target area.
Breakaway Well Prospect in SW of tenements
Iceni will carry out 2,500m of RC drilling at the Breakaway Well 5km x 2km Gold Anomaly with multi-element anomalies.
Five drill pads are already in place, with the first drilling underway.
These Prospects set up for an exciting period ahead for Iceni as it undertakes some serious potentially company changing drilling and other field work.
ASX Gold Sector
US$ Gold has made an important breakout to new all-time highs after almost four years of sideways consolidation.
Gold in AU$ has also just made a new all-time high in a parabolic rise.
Small Caps
With the rising gold price, the time is now here for gold sector explorers to recover their positions as important players in the overall gold market.
The past three years have been abominable for shareholders and managements, with this index of small gold deposit developers falling >70% from the highs.
These small-cap gold project developers are now bottoming out, and some are starting to turn up.
Explorers like ICL are at bargain basement levels and will soon follow.
These have already begun to turn up against the larger gold stocks in the ASX XGD Gold Index.
ICL is at the bottom of its technical pattern.
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