Vanstar Mining (VSR.V) has released the assay results from the winter drill program conducted by 75% partner IAMgold (IMG.TO, IAG) at the Nelligan project where the latter can earn an 80% stake.
The headline result is a headline result of 10.5 meters containing 10.5 g/t gold but this interval was caused by a 1.5 meter ultra high-grade zone containing 69.1 g/t (indicating the remaining 9 meters of the interval carried a grade just below 0.8 g/t). After capping that result to 30 g/t, the 10.5 meters would have returned 4.95 g/t gold. A deeper gold interval intersected 28.5 meters of 0.78 g/t gold.
If we would remove the ultra high-grade interval from the 10.5 meter assay, the results are very comparable to historical hole 17-65 which encountered 10.5 meters of 0.87 g/t gold, so it’s not a stretch to say the gold mineralization at Renard West seems to be continuing for another 150-200 meters. There still are a lot of dots to connect there, and we will be looking forward to seeing the one additional hole drilled on Renard West as that hole was drilled about 200 meters northeast of the 10.5 meters at 10.5 g/t hole and about 200 meters north of the historical hole.
Of course there’s more than just that one eye-catching hole. IAMgold completed additional drilling on the main Renard zone (which hosts 2.98 million of the 3.2 million ounces gold in the inferred resource category) and continued to intersect gold with grades exceeding the 1.02 g/t average grade of the overall resource. So the released holes further confirm additional gold towards the west and at depth and it’s realistic to assume more tonnes and ounces will be added to the current resource estimate.
As the winter drill program was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, IAMgold is currently designing a new summer drill program to complete a few thousand additional meters. We expect to see more details on the upcoming drill program shortly.
Disclosure: The author has no position in Vanstar Mining. Vanstar is not a sponsor of the website, but we were compensated by a third party.
