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Kent Exploration looks to drill Alexander River gold project
9 August 2010 - Vancouver-based junior explorer Kent Exploration is preparing for possible drill tests of its Alexander River gold prospecting permit following a recent survey.
Sources: Kent Exploration and Lindsay Clark
Kent Exploration holds the 26 sq km Alexander River PP 51589 which is approximately 25 km southeast of Reefton on the West Coast of the South Island. The permit encompasses the Alexander underground gold mine where gold was first discovered in 1921. This historic mine produced over 41,000 oz of gold between 1924 and when it closed in 1943.
A Macraes Mining report in 1992 estimated the Alexander River prospect had a potential resource of about 4 million tonnes of ore grading over 5 grams per tonne of gold, for approximately 643,000 oz of gold. However, Kent are not treating the historical estimates in the 1992 report as reliable, as not enough work has been done by a sufficiently qualified person to classify the estimates as a current mineral resource.
Kent Exploration said in a statement to the Ventures section of the Toronto Stock Exchange that it had recently received the final results of an induced polarisation (IP) survey on its Alexander River prospect. This IP survey outlined several targets defined by chargeability highs. These occurred both near the historic mine workings and in what appeared to be a continuation of the Alexander Reef zone or a second sulphide-mineralised zone to the north.
The IP survey followed up on a trenching programme conducted by Kent in 2009, where geological consultants located and sampled most of the historic trenches and adits sampled by CRA in 1988. These trenches and adits were located along a gold-mineralised strike length of about 1.2 km that were above or within the old mine workings.
Some of the assay results from the 2009 trenching which were reported earlier by Kent included: 3.2m at 24.60 g/t Au, 6.4m at 6.87 g/t Au, and 12.8m at 4.50 g/t Au.
Kent Exploration has applied to the Department of Conservation for an initial low impact diamond drill programme to test IP anomalies and other geological targets that it has found at the Alexander River prospect.
