Drilling Success Continues To Expand Ta Khoa Potential
Blackstone Minerals Limited (ASX: BSX) has intersected massive sulfide in three maiden drill holes at Ban Chang, part of its Ta Khoa Nickel-PGE project, Vietnam.
The drill holes were drilled more than 1km apart and along strike within a 1.2km-long massive sulfide target zone defined by high priority EM plates.
Drillhole BC20-03 intersected a zone of 9.15m wide veins of sulfide mineralisation including 4.6m of massive sulfide (MSV) and semi massive sulfide veins (SMSV) with the broader intersection comprising:
- 1.00m DSS & sulfide veinlets from 57.05m; 0.35m sulfide veinlets from 58.05m; 0.30m MSVfrom 58.40m; 2.30m DSS, 10-12% sulfides from 58.70m; 2.35m SMSVfrom 61.0m; 1.85m MSVfrom 63.35m; 0.40m sulfide veinlets from 65.20m; 0.10m MSVfrom 65.60m; 0.50m DSS and sulfide veinlets from 65.70m.
Blackstone Minerals’ Managing Director Scott Williamson commented:
“We’re pleased to announce a significant intersection of a 9.15m wide zone of nickel sulfide vein mineralisation at Ban Chang which could have the scale and geometry to be mined as a bulk underground mining scenario,” Managing Director, Scott Williamson, said.
“We’ll continue to explore Ban Chang’s potential to become a supplementary high-grade feed source to the main Ban Phuc disseminated sulfide orebody, with further holes planned for drilling in this area.”
The drilling is part of an ongoing campaign to target regional MSV as Blackstone aims to build its resource inventory at Ta Khoa.
Blackstone’s second drill rig will continue to follow the in-house geophysics team throughout the Ta Khoa nickel sulfide district, testing high priority EM targets generated from 25 MSV prospects including King Snake, Ban Khoa, Ban Chang, and Ban Khang.
Blackstone’s Ta Khoa Nickel–PGE project has a combination of large DSS nickel targets and 25 other prospects, including multiple high-grade MSV targets of the style that were mined at Ban Phuc from an average vein width of 1.3m. The Ban Phuc Nickel mine operated for 3.5 years between 2013 and 2016, producing 20.7kt Ni, 10.1kt Cu and 0.67kt Co, before closing when the defined mineable reserves were depleted. The high-grade Ban Phuc MSV is less than 50m to the south of the Ban Phuc DSS deposit and remains underexplored at depths below the base of previous mining. Many other MSV targets are within potential trucking distance of the existing 450ktpa Ban Phuc processing facility that was built to international standards and has been on care and maintenance since 2016.
Blackstone is evaluating near-mine MSV and other potential DSS targets to continue drill testing during the 2020 season, with the concept of identifying high-grade and further disseminated mineralisation for either an early restart of the Ban Phuc mining operation, or the potential to blend higher grade MSV mineralisation with the larger tonnage DSS mineralisation for processing.
