EXPLORATION

Australian explorer Azimuth grows its grade potential with Guyana gold

The Western Australian explorer is building on its high grade results on gold tenements in Guyana in South America.

Author: Ross Louthean
Posted: Friday , 27 Apr 2012

PERTH (MINEWEB) - 

Azimuth Resources (ASX: AZH) just-released quarterly report reveals more high grade intersections at one of its prospects, the Smarts deposit, during the three months and also details some high grade hits early this month.

In Guyana Azimuth holds about 8,000 square kilometres of granted leases known as the East and West Omai projects that cover 10% of the strike of the Guiana Shield - a greenstone belt that has shown an endowment of about 100 million ounces of gold.

Drilling in the quarter at smarts produced a series of high and wide intersections including 15 metres grading 34.5 grams/tonne, 7m @ 19.9 g/t, 10m @ 16.4 g/t, 29m @ 17.8 g/t, 19m @ 7.01 g/t and 32m @ 4.34 g/t gold.

Subsequent to the end of the month, Azimuth reported further results from Smarts including 29m @ 17.8 g/t Au from 58m, 19m @ 7.01 g/t from 83m, 3m @ 4.95 g/t from 91m followed by 5m @ 23.24 g/t from 99m; 5m @ 10.36 g/t from 135m followed by 32m @ 4.34 g/t from 242m; and 14m @ 5.22 g/t gold from 134m.

Resource estimates for Smarts and the Hicks deposits are to be completed this month.

Initial metallurgical testwork from both oxide and fresh material from Hicks showed it to be amenable for treatment by conventional CIP/CIL processing.

West Omai takes in about 1,000 km² that takes in a 40 km strike portion of the Omai-Hicks-Kaburi Corridor which hosts the Omai gold mine, 15 km south-east of Azimuth's ground, which produced 3.7 million oz of gold.

A 10 km by 2 km portion of West Omai is the current search focus and takes in the Hicks and Smarts deposits.

Azimuth has embarked on an auger sampling programme on West Omai with a focus on the Gem Creek Trend and by quarter end 750 holes were completed and 2,865 samples taken.

"Presently the company is awaiting assays for the majority of the last four quarters of auger sampling, while the labs concentrate on clearing the backlog of RC and diamond drilling samples," the company said.

Flying of high resolution airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys covering both West and East Omai were completed in February. Data was being processed and was expected to be available during the current quarter.

Azimuth also holds the Amakura uranium project in north-west Guyana which it said exhibits several large high-intensity airborne radiometric anomalies associated with broad regions of surface uranium anomalism.

The company said Amakura is prospective for granite-hosted and sodic metasomatic uranium deposits.