Company progress is where I've been focussing my own research of late. In particular, the upcoming Hargraves drilling program is likely to produce a substantial resource open in five directions! (North South East West and Down!)
I've taken a careful look through a NSW DPI publication on the Hargraves Goldfield. It's worth checking the reference just to get an idea of how much gold has come out of the Hargraves area.
HEG is concentrating the drilling on The Big Nugget Hill reefs but there are at least five separate lines of reefs right alongside each other. From west to east these are the Scotch Hill line, Big Nugget Hill line, Florence line, Frenchman's line and Happy Dicks line. I expect Dick wasn't the only happy miner with all that gold.
The drilling program will provide certainty in relation to the structure of the BNH reefs. They appear to stack one on top of the other and are likely to keep repeating with depth. The BNH line appears to have the greatest concentration of historic workings but these are relatively shallow, less than 50m deep. This concentration of mines would have provided the incentive to drill out the deeper zones of the BNH line. As a bonus, north of Hargraves the line may have an unmined, near surface zone.
Historic grades indicate ore is likely to be richer than the projected 5gpt. However the advantage of Hargraves over HEG's current mine, is that the saddle reef structures seem large enough to be accessed by mechanical equipment. This means cheaper mining costs and a lower cutoff grade. The company can scope out a mining operation with ore grading 5gpt according to drill assays. The nugget effect means that assays will underestimate grade, but provided the mineralised structures are large enough for mechanical mining and apparent grade is 5gpt or better, the Hargraves deposit is likely to be economic at or near the current POG.
Time and effort will tell.
HEG Price at posting:
20.0¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
