Formerly known as the Mt Carrington project, Drake covers 350km2 of prospective epithermal terrain and porphyry potential which hosts an existing resource of 320,000oz gold and 23Moz silver within the New England Belt.
New England is host to major deposits such as the 2.5Moz Cracow gold mine and the 8.5Moz Mt Carlton gold mine.
Historical drilling has returned gold results such as 8m @16.92g/t and 118m @ 1.71g/t, copper hits of 16m @ 5.18% and 10.1m @ 7.26%, and silver intersections topping up to 26.5m @ 220g/t.
Legacy Minerals (ASX:LGM) will shift the focus at Drake towards exploration with a strategic approach towards making further discoveries by targeting the porphyry copper potential.
Drake includes a ~150km2 collapsed caldera and associated mineralisation which has similar geological characteristics to other major Pacific Rim settings and deposits such as the Porgera goldfield in Papua New Guinea.
Porgera is the second largest mine in PNG and one of the world’s top 10 gold mines.
LGM believes that by focusing on the porphyry copper-gold characteristics, there is strong potential for a major discovery and expanding existing resources.
LGM has completed the acquisition of the Mt Carrington exploration licence (EL6273) for $190,000 from White Rock Resources.
It has also submitted exploration licence application ELA 6642 over all of White Rock’s mining leases, which White Rock had lodged applications for their surrender in July 2023.
Once relinquishment of the mining licences is completed, the rights to the resources will be held by LGM through granting of the ELA.
“The Legacy Minerals team is extremely pleased to add the highly valued Drake project to our significant gold and copper portfolio,” LGM managing director Christopher Byrne said.
“Along with our 100% owned Black Range, and our Bauloora Project being explored under a Newmont JV, this is the third project of district scale control in the Legacy Minerals portfolio.
Byrne added the acquisition of the Drake project aligns with the company’s goal of realising value from underestimated projects.
“Along with these resources, the company see the potential for the significant value uplift through the vast exposure to major untested gold and copper potential,” he said.
“The project sits within a roughly 150km2 collapsed caldera and associated epithermal systems interpreted to be analogous in both the mineralisation character and geological setting to the world class, 20Moz Porgera Goldfield.
“With significant sunk cost already on the project the starting block for Legacy Minerals to make discoveries for shareholders is high.
“A historical focus on defining silver and shallow gold resources has meant significant areas at these exciting sites have not been satisfactorily tested, and in many cases undrilled.
“Legacy Minerals plans to shift the approach away from the mining-focused operation to an exploration project and the potential upside from new major discoveries being made.”
While LGM moved to pick up the Drake project, it is also preparing to launch drilling across its entire portfolio.
First off the rank is the Black Range project in the Lachlan Fold Belt where drilling will target a large gold-silver in soil anomaly poised to start in early April.
Black Range is an extensive low-sulphidation epithermal system with limited historical exploration.
Later in Q2 2024, LGM plans to carry out drilling at Fontenoy where partner Earth AI has used artificial intelligence-guided exploration to discover magmatic PGE-nickel-copper mineralisation.
Magmatic nickel-copper styles of mineralisation have the potential to be very large deposits with examples including Sirius Resources’ Nova-Bollinger and Chalice’s Gonneville deposit at the Julimar project.
While Fontenoy has seen historical drilling for shallow nickel-laterite deposits, previous work had not tested for the potential of PGEs or magmatic-related mineralisation.
During the quarter, LGM also expects to start drilling at the Bauloora project to further test the 27km2 vein field.
Partner Newmont, which has met their Phase 1 minimum commitment, has confirmed that they have elected to proceed with the sole funding of the Phase 1 earn-in of the $15 million Bauloora joint venture.
To cap it off, LGM plans to drill test the Shellback anomaly within its Glenlogan project, in conjunction with JV partner S2 Resources (ASX:S2R), in Q3/Q4.
“With gold and silver at near record highs in 2024, and strong demand for copper, we are pleased to have secured for our shareholders significant leverage to the potential value at Drake,” Byrne says.
“More broadly, the Company is in a strong position with potential discovery successes across multiple upcoming drilling campaigns in 2024 on our own projects and through our partnerships with Newmont, S2 Resources, and Earth AI.”