Japan Gold Receives First Drilling Permit and Commences Drilling
Japan Gold Corp. (TSX-V: JG) (OTCQB: JGLDF) announced that it has been granted a drilling permit for the Akebono prospect at the Company’s Ikutahara Project in Hokkaido, Japan, and the drilling program has commenced.
Highlights:
The scout drilling program commenced on November 28, 2017, and will continue into late December.
Six drill holes totalling up to 1000 metres of diamond core drilling are initially planned.
Drilling results are anticipated in February 2018.
Japan Gold’s drilling contractor Sumiko Resources Exploration & Development Co., Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd., is operating two of Japan Gold’s compact portable drill rigs for this program.
Surface mapping by Japan Gold has confirmed a quartz vein structure up to 4 metres wide, exposed along a 770 metre open ended strike length.
Historical underground sampling at Akebono reported several zones of high-grade mineralisation, including a 1.2 metre wide channel sample across the vein at 446 g/t Au and 376 g/t Ag (see news release dated: February 9, 2017).
Drilling will target extensions to high-grade mineralisation identified in the historic underground workings.
John Proust, Chairman and CEO of Japan Gold, stated, “Award of our first drilling permit is a significant milestone for Japan Gold. Since the Japan Mining Act was amended in 2012, Japan Gold has blazed a trail as the first foreign mineral exploration company to apply for prospecting rights in historic mining districts in Japan, as well as the first to be granted Prospect Rights. The Company has now been awarded its first drilling permit and we are very excited to begin the drilling program at the Akebono prospect.“
Mr. Proust continued, “Japan Gold has generated additional compelling drill targets, focussing on high grade epithermal veins, in and around historic mines and workings. The Company will seek to rapidly progress these targets to the permitting phase so that they can be drill tested in 2018. We are very proud of our progress to date, and this bodes well for Japan Gold’s ability to advance its extensive portfolio of prospective gold projects.”
The initial program, of up to six holes totalling up to 1000 metres of diamond drilling, will aim to confirm and extend historic high-grade underground sampling to define the potential for high-grade shoots in the Akebono vein system. The drilling program is expected to continue into late December with results anticipated in February 2018.
The Akebono prospect is a low-sulphidation epithermal gold-silver vein target, exhibiting quartz vein textures typically associated with ‘boiling zone’ gold precipitation in such hydrothermal systems.
Surface mapping conducted by the Company during 2016 and 2017 has identified a steeply dipping, northeast trending vein system with widths up to four metres and a strike length of over 770 metres open both to the northeast and southwest.
Discovered in 1931, underground exploration at Akebono was carried out between 1938 and 1940, however, no production records were reported prior to government imposed gold mine closures in 1943. In the 1960’s the underground workings were re-entered and sampled and several high-grade samples were reported. Details of these historic assay results were published by the Metal Mining Agency of Japan (MMAJ, 1990)1, high-grade intervals include 1.2 metres @ 446 g/t gold and 376 g/t silver and 0.65 metres @ 91.5 g/t gold and 4,891 g/t silver.