In the quest to add low-hanging fruit to the development and mining scenario at DeLamar, Integra Resources (ITR.V, ITRG) will soon start an 11,000 meter drill program solely focusing on the stockpiled material and the tonnes used to backfill the historical operations at DeLamar.
This announcement doesn’t come as a surprise as in a previous report we already briefly touched upon this subject as the low-grade material has the potential to add a significant amount of tonnes and ounces to the mine life. While the grade won’t be too exciting, a large earth moving exercise like this could add value to the DeLamar project as the company would basically just have to scoop up these stockpiles and deposit them on the leach pad (of course subject to additional metallurgical studies which shouldn’t be an issue).
The company will use dual rotary and sonic drilling for all holes to follow up on some of the historical holes drilled into the areas of interest. Those historical intervals may not be as accurate as the upcoming dual rotary and sonic drill program but it at least creates some sort of indication there is something to be found there.
Integra has budgeted for a 11,000 meter drill program on these stockpiles and will punch holes on 60 meter intervals with a select amount of holes to be used as infill holes with 30 meter spacings. All holes should be pretty shallow considering the average thickness of the stockpiles is less than 40 meters although in certain areas they could extend to a vertical depth of almost 130 meters. Drilling will take three months (and we should hopefully see first assay results by the end of November/mid-December. All drill results will be used in an upcoming resource update which will also be included in the mine plan of operations which will likely be submitted by the end of next year.
With an exploration target of 60 million tonnes with an average gold-equivalent grade of 0.3-0.6 g/t, even adding just 30 million tonnes at 0.4 g/t gold-equivalent would add almost 400,000 ounces gold-equivalent to the mine plan, to recover almost 300,000 additional gold-equivalent ounces.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Integra Resources. Integra is a sponsor of the website. Please read our disclaimer.
