Moneta Gold drills 31.17 g/t gold over 4.25 metres at Tower, Ontario
Moneta Gold Inc. [ME-TSX] provided a project update and assay results from 32 drill holes on the Windjammer and Westaway deposits at the Tower gold project, located in the Timmins gold camp, northern Ontario.
The drilling was conducted as part of a 140,000-metre drilling program, started in 2022, designed for resource upgrade and infill of the 4.5 million ounces (Moz) indicated gold and 8.3 Moz inferred gold mineral resource estimate.
Project update: 110,000 metres of 140,000 metres infill drill program completed; WSP Global is engaged to design and oversee the execution of prefeasibility study (PFS) engineering studies and to support Moneta through permitting of the Tower Gold project.
Commenced open-pit geomechanical drilling and hydrogeological testing in mid-August; Overburden geotechnical drilling under way; Metallurgical drilling and sample collection are under way in anticipation of lab analysis, including variability test work, starting in Q4 2023.
Environmental permitting: submission of initial project description (IPD) to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, on target for late Q4 2023, which will initiate the federal impact assessment (IA) process.
Mine Technical Services (MTS) was appointed to lead resource updates in anticipation of the PFS and to support the design of the remaining metres of the infill drill program. Completion of open-pit PFS on target for H2 2024, focusing on the first 11 years of September, 2022, preliminary economic assessment (PEA).
Drilling highlights at Windjammer: MGH23-416 intersected 4.25 metres at 31.17 g/t gold, including 1.40 metres at 93.00 g/t gold. MGH22-433 intersected 38.10 metres at 1.18 g/t gold, including 16.50 metres at 2.02 g/t gold, including 4.90 metres at 3.75 g/t gold. MGH23-433 intersected 17.47 metres at 1.01 g/t gold.
Westaway: MGH23-401 intersected 12.90 metres at 3.90 g/t gold, including 7.10 metres at 6.25 g/t gold. MGH23-427 intersected 8.47 metres at 4.05 g/t gold, including 2.00 metres at 12.85 g/t gold. MGH23-407 intersected 11.80 metres at 2.75 g/t gold, including 7.50 metres at 3.84 g/t gold.
Josef Vejvoda, Chairman and Interim President and CEO, commented, “I am very pleased with the dedication and effort of our entire team as they continue to advance Tower Gold towards a pre-feasibility study. Recent milestones include commencing geomechanical drilling and hydrogeological testing and announcing further assay results from infill and step-out drilling, which continue to confirm the continuity and extensions of gold mineralization at Windjammer and Westaway. Drilling has been focussed on the open pit portions of the mineral resources as defined in the 2022 PEA study during the first 11 years of production.”
A total of 6,176 metres of drilling was completed in thirty-two (32) drill holes. Drilling is being conducted on 50-metre centres as step-outs and infill of previous drill holes. Additional assays from 2023 drilling are pending and will be released upon receipt of results.
The Windjammer South and Central deposits host a combined open pit indicated resource of 70.55 million tonnes (Mt) at 0.72 g/t gold containing 1.64 Moz gold and an inferred resource of 112.30 Mt at 0.74 g/t gold containing 2.67 Moz gold.
The Westaway deposit currently hosts an open pit indicated resource of 0.75 million tonnes (Mt) at 2.20 g/t gold containing 53,000 oz gold and an inferred resource of 22.11 Mtat 1.95 g/t gold containing 1,383,000 oz gold. The drill holes in this release focused on infill and extensions of the mineral resource within the current open pit PEA mine shells from surface to vertical depths of up to 325 m below surface.