Medgold Resources Corp. completed the planned drilling for 2018 at the Tlamino gold project in southern Serbia. The exploration programme at Tlamino is fully funded by Fortuna Silver Mines Inc., and directed by a joint Fortuna-Medgold technical committee pursuant to the terms of the Tlamino option agreement announced on 7 March 2017. Assays have been received for holes BAR014 to BAR020, returning best intercepts of 33.0 m @ 1.14 g/t Au and 8.2 m @ 2.29 g/t Au. Medgold and its partner, Fortuna, have approved a US$2 million budget for the project for 2019 to continue drilling at Barje and Karamanica.
Mineralisation has now been confirmed over an area of 500 m by 400 m, east-west by north-south. The main zone of mineralised hydrothermal breccia and alteration has excellent lateral continuity between drill holes, is flat-lying to gently dipping, with a thickness of up to 30 m, but recent drilling extending outside of this area, yielded weaker mineralisation.
Drilling stepped to the west across the Barje project, systematically testing a large chargeability anomaly identified by an induced polarisation-resistivity geophysical survey completed in 2017. The anomaly measures 1400 m east-west by 400 m north-south, and includes a second-order anomaly with a north-northeast axis overlying the Barje outcrop. The results received to date demonstrate the gold anomalism is weakening as drilling moved to the west away from the high-grade drill holes announced in June which were collared near the Barje discovery outcrop.
Dan James, President of Medgold, said: “As our drilling has moved west, gold grades have declined, suggesting that the chargeability anomaly is not necessarily diagnostic of the presence of high-grade gold mineralisation, but more indicative of a broad halo of disseminated sulfide mineralisation. The first 13 holes identified an extensive zone of high-grade gold-silver-base-metal mineralisation at Tlamino with excellent continuity of mineralisation from hole to hole and we’ll be looking at these over the winter to try to identify additional possible controls. We’ll also be looking to test the open-ground between Barje and Liska, which are over 1 km apart, and aligned on a north-northeast axis, for potential blind targets beneath a conglomeratic unit.”
The company also completed an IP chargeability/resistivity survey over the adjacent prospect of Karamanica, identifying a series of linear and northwest-trending high-chargeability zones up to 1.5 km in strike length, coincident with gold-in-soil anomalism. IP was used successfully at Barje to identify broad zones of sulphide mineralisation, so the Karamanica anomalies are priorities for drilling in 2019. The Tlamino gold project.
The project is located in southern Serbia, close to the borders of both Bulgaria and Macedonia, five hours south of Belgrade. Tlamino is comprised of two exploration licences, Donje Tlamino and Surlica-Dukat, each approximately 100 km2. All exploration work at the project is fully-funded by Fortuna, which has an option to earn up to 70% of the Project by spending US$8 million on exploration over five years and completing a Preliminary Economic Assessment.
The Barje zone
The Barje zone hosts a large outcrop of intense brecciation and mineralisation, which Medgold channel sampled in 2017, yielding a best result of 84m of 5.60 g/t Au and 105 g/t Ag (see company press release on 18 July 2017). Gold-silver mineralisation is associated with tectonic brecciation in hanging wall schists along thrusts above a large regional detachment fault. Zones of intense hydrothermal breccias and altered schist clasts have formed at the base of the hangingwall to the thrust surfaces. These zones of intense brecciation typically yield high-grade gold-silver intercepts, but brecciation, fracturing and sulfide mineralisation is pervasive across large zones of the hanging wall schists and can yield broad intersections of tens of meters of low- (>0.5 g/t Au) to moderate-grade (>1 g/t Au) gold and silver mineralisation.
A preliminary gold deportment study by Dr. Chris Blake, an independent mineralogist is underway on four samples from Barje to determine the grain size, liberation and association of microscopically visible native gold grains within the mineralisation. Grains of free gold have been observed in three of the samples with gold grain sizes of up to 40 μm associated with pyrite, sphalerite, galena, chalcophyrite and arsenopyrite. In the fourth sample free gold grains were not microscopically identified.
The Karamanica zone
The Karamanica zone is approximately 8 km northwest of Barje, located on the southeastern flanks of the Crnook Dome on a series of steep northwest-trending strike- and dip- faults. Immediately to the southeast of Karamanica, and along-strike, is an active mine working a polymetallic skarn deposit associated with felsic porphyritic intrusions. At Karamanica, Medgold has identified a significant gold-in-soil anomaly (>0.1 ppm Au), broadly extensive over a 2 km x 2 km area, with higher-grade northwest-trending anomalies. Mineralisation has been observed within felsic intrusions, similar to the active mine to the southeast, but also as replacement zones within calcareous units.
An Induced Polarisation survey at Karamanica was completed in the autumn of 2018, covering 32 line kms, with a line spacing of 200 m. The survey identified two northwest-trending chargeability anomalies containing values of >30 mV/V. The first anomaly is located in the southwest-side of the survey, extending 2 km northwest-southeast by up to 600 m, and is coincident with an extension of a northwest-trending fault associated with mineralisation in the polymetallic mine to the southeast. The second anomaly is located on the northeast-side of the survey, extending 750 m northwest-southeast by 250 m, and is open to the southeast. This shallow anomaly is coincident with mineralisation observed within calcareous (limestone) units. Both of these anomalies require follow-up and will be drill tested in 2019.
Source: globalminingreview
