Following a suite of successful results earlier in the summer, the drillbits have been set in motion again on the Yandal West gold project owned by Great Western Exploration Ltd (ASX:GTE).
Yandal West is situated in a highly prospective yet relatively underexplored area in the Northern Yilgarn, a famously prolific mining district in Western Australia.
More specifically, it’s situated on the western side of the world class Yandal gold belt, 60 kilometres south of the ten million ounce Jundee project and 55 kilometres north of the three million ounce Bronzewing project.
Earlier soil sampling identified a nine kilometre trend at Yandal West, which Great Western Exploration is now targeting with an ongoing drill programme.
Three prospects are being targeting, with three holes set to go into each, in the latest phase of the drilling.
The Mayfields prospect, is a greenfields gold discovery made in the last 18 months, which has already yielded three metres of drill core grading at five grams per tonne. The idea of the current drilling is to try to extend the area of known mineralisation here.
Great Western will also test along strike at Harris Find, drilling a line across the soil anomaly there to determine the geological profile.
Finally, the company is also doing a little bit of drilling at the Ives Find prospect, following on from recent work there which has established that the geochemical signature and the geological setting is analogous to Jundee.
Highlights of previous drilling at Ives Find include three metres at 52.8 grams per tonne, two metres at 13.25 grams per tonne, and three metres at 10 grams per tonne.
Great Western Exploration has identified at least five discreet high grade gold lode targets along strike, and the theory is that these will increase in size at depth and link up with a broader feeder zone.
So there will be plenty of newsflow to keep investors interested over the next month or two, as the results are expected in the next three-to-five weeks. But there’s already been significant interest on the market, as the shares have more than doubled in the past three or four weeks, from A$0.003 to A$0.006, as the market has woken up to momentum that’s building at Yandal West.
But it’s not just gold that’s bringing in new interest.
Great Western has a huge area under licence that’s prospective for several metals, as well as potash, which is well in keeping with the wider geological setting.
Not only does the northern Yilgarn host several world class gold deposits, it also hosts world class nickel deposits, like Mt Keith and Honeymoon Well, and is also emerging as a significant district for other base metals too, following the discovery of the Degrussa and Monty volcanic massive sulphide deposits.
At Great Western Exploration’s Yerrida project, the ground looks highly prospective for copper and vanadium. The company has just completed some soil sampling over a potential copper target, and is now doing some more work on the high grade vanadium gossans that it discovered recently.
Indeed, Great Western Exploration literature goes so far a to identify Yerrida as “a new potential vanadium district, approximately 1,800 square kilometres in area.
The widespread vanadium mineralisation associated with the gossan outcrops it’s identified includes grades of up to 1.6% V205.
So far 27 vanadium gossan targets have been identified to date, with further areas to be assessed.
There’s plenty of money in the bank to undertake this work, following an oversubscribed A$1.15mln rights issue in June.
This was priced at A$0.004 per share, and benefitted from strong support from existing investors as well as significant interest from new investors too.
Each new share had an option attached exercisable at A$0.01, so there is a little way to go yet before the option money comes in. But with the gold price on a tear, exploration results continuing to deliver the goods and huge potential upside from Yerrida and the vanadium, this is a company that could end up rewarding its early backers handsomely.
The company also has a potential potash project at Lake Way, directly south of Salt Lake Potash’s (ASX:SO4)
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