Australian Variscan Mines gets approval to drill for gold in France
Staff Writer |
Variscan Mines announced its wholly owned subsidiary Variscan Mines SAS has received formal government approval for its drilling programme to test highly prospective gold targets within its St Pierre Gold Project.
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Variscan has signed a contract with Cofor Drilling to provide services for the planned drilling within both the St Pierre gold and Merleac zinc licences. Drill rigs are expected to arrive at site shortly with drilling activities to commence once preparatory work is finalised.
At St Pierre, previous exploration by Variscan defined two outstanding gold targets along strike from and to the south of the La Bellière gold mine, believed to be France's third largest gold mine, which is recorded to have produced 334,000 ounces gold at a grade of 12g/t gold until 1952.
These are the Belleville and Ville Tirard prospects which will be tested by a combination of shallow traverse RC and core diamond drilling.
At Belleville previous exploration has defined a 900 x 400 metre zone of strongly anomalous gold values up to 2.4g/t gold in soils displaying a similar gross orientation to the gold bearing shear structure at the La Bellière mine (ASX announcement 2 June 2015 and September 2015 Quarterly).
Two traverses of 16 inclined, 60 metre deep RC holes (for around 1000 metres) are planned to test the anomaly across the interpreted east-north-east striking shear zone.
At Ville Tirard, two shallow core holes will test an area where old drilling (1952) at the western end of the main gold field is recorded in reports held by the BRGM (Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières - the French geological survey) to have intersected broad zones (estimated >15-20 metres true width) of gold mineralisation with individual assays between 0.5 to 33g/t gold, averaging in the range of 3-4 g/t Au. ■
A very active and complex mid-May weather pattern is set to produce numerous areas of severe weather, heavy rain, high winds, and anomalous temperatures through this weekend.