Canadian company Ongwe Minerals Inc has discovered a 2km-long, gold-rich bedrock area along the Khorixas fault zone at its Belmont prospect in Namibia.
According to a statement issued by Ongwe’s chief executive, Dave Underwood, the gold bedrock is outlined under thick alluvial and calcrete cover.
The altered and mineralised wall rock is up to 125m wide, with gold values in the bedrock samples amounting to 0.2g/t.
It is expected that there will be higher-grade quartz veins within the package, the statement says.
“The initial bedrock sampling programme at Belmont has produced what we were hoping for – a coherent and extensive zone of bedrock alteration and mineralisation along the Khorixas fault.
“We have now defined a strong walk-up drill target on a prospective basin margin structure, which will be tested in the coming months along with the other defined targets.
“The bedrock sampling technique essentially collects single, blind, rock chip samples on a grid of 25 x 200m and is designed to define the mineralising system, not sample individual high-grade veins,” Underwood says, adding that the anomalous but low-grade gold values are therefore expected and welcomed.
He says chances of sampling individual high-grade quartz veins within the mineralised zone are very slim at this point, but the presence of high-grade rock chip samples from outcropping quartz veins in the vicinity gives confidence that higher grades may be present within the plains bedrock.
Ongwe Minerals, formerly Great Quest Gold, has three flagship projects in Namibia and a dominant land position in the emerging and highly prospective Northwest Damara Belt.
They comprise the Khorixas project on 154 000ha, which includes the Belmont prospect, an orogenic gold system with a surface footprint of 12km x 6km, and numerous high-grade rock chips at surface.
The Omatjete project on 151 800ha contains the Manga prospect, an orogenic gold system 30km along strike from the recently discovered Kokoseb gold deposit (WIA Gold), with a surface footprint of 4.5 x 1km.
The Outjo project on 46 000 ha is along the strike from Osino’s Eureka Gold Discovery and occupies a geological setting similar to that of the Eureka discovery.
Gold mineralisation at the Khorixas fault zone is typically hosted in the highly deformed hanging wall of the fault and is associated with intense iron-carbonate alteration and disseminated sulphides.
Underwood says the Khorixas fault zone is interpreted as a reactivated basin-margin structure separating competent Archaean basement rocks to the northeast from more ductile sedimentary units of the Neoproterozoic Kuiseb formation to the southwest.
In addition, two discrete, single-line anomalies have been identified about 800m and 1 400m to the east of the Khorixas fault.
Underwood says the bedrock sampling programme has now moved to the Manga target on the Omatjete project.
– email: matthew@namibian.com.na
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