News: Montezuma Mining starts key drilling in gold rich Yamarna Belt

Cashed up Montezuma Mining Company (ASX:MZM) has started a highly anticipated maiden gold drilling program at its Yamarna Project in Western Australia.

The Yamarna Belt is geologically similar to the prolific Kalgoorlie Gold Belt and hosts Gold Road Resources’ (ASX:GOR) 5.6 million ounce Gruyere discovery.

Montezuma’s ground is adjacent to and located along strike from Gruyere. It contains multiple undrilled historical geochemical anomalies.

Phase one aircore drilling consists of between 8,000 metres and 10,000 metres to test multiple geochemical and structural targets.   

These include three priority, regional scale targets over geologically and structurally favourable positions.

The largest anomaly outlines a target zone over 1 kilometre in strike, coincident with an interpreted shear zone.

Justin Brown, executive director, commented:

“Drilling is underway and the company is looking forward to sharing the results of the first ever drilling program at this exciting project with the market as they come to hand.”


Drill Targets

Recent surface geochemical results highlighted three priority regional scale targets to be tested by the aircore drilling.

Priority Anomaly 1 (1.3 kilometres by 350 metres at >10ppb gold) is associated with a granite/greenstone contact marginal to a regional gravity high.

The geochemical sampling returned a peak value returned of 20.8ppb gold.

Priority Anomaly 2 (over 1 kilometre strike at >5ppb gold) is associated with an interpreted embayment in the granite near the interpreted granite/greenstone contact zone.

This returned a peak value of 13.5ppb gold.

The last Priority Anomaly (over 1.5 kilometres strike at >5ppb gold) is associated with a potential shear zone along the granite/greenstone contact.


Yamarna Project

The Yamarna Project is located within the Yamarna Greenstone Belt, which is geologically similar to the prolific Kalgoorlie Gold Belt and has been the focus of limited exploration.

Work on the Yamarna Belt, which is over 200 kilometres in strike length and historically unexplored, has so far has yielded in excess of 6 million ounces of gold.

This compares with the 160Moz gold endowment at the Kalgoorlie Belt and 62Moz at Laverton-Leonora, highlighting the potential for further discoveries.


Analysis

Well-funded Montezuma's (cash of circa $6.6 million at June Quarter end) drill program will be closely watched given Gold Road's success.

It will fund a low cost entry point into a highly prospective gold project ahead of the company’s exploration program over the next two quarters to test target potential.