NioGold (NOX.V) has released the assay results of an additional 30 diamond drill holes at the Marban deposit. The holes were aimed to determine a resource estimate for the open pit at the project (as it looked like the underground development at Marban wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon).
The assay results were pretty decent but a little bit underwhelming as even though the higher grade intercepts have an excellent average grade (up to almost 2 ounces per tonne), the average width is very limited, which would have severe consequences for the stripping ratio. There are some longer mineralized intervals such as the 31.5 meters of 1.57 g/t (the company’s headline) and almost 15 meters of 1.37 g/t gold, but the intervals start respectively at a vertical depth of 190 meters and 290 meters, which already is quite deep for an open pit mine.
It might be best for NioGold to focus on the narrow but high-grade zones near the surface as that’s where NioGold might have the best odds to define an open pittable deposit.
The 70,000 meter drill program will be completed any day now, and it will be very interesting to see an updated resource calculation for the Marban project and how continuous the mineralized zones are.
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Disclosure: The author holds no position in NioGold. Please see our disclaimer for current positions.
