Canada-based Omai Gold Mines has discovered significant gold values during initial trenching and drilling on the Broccoli Hill target at its Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni), Guyana property.
On Wednesday, the company disclosed that trenching exposed a quartz-rich shear zone with samples assaying 29.3 g/t Au, 7.8 g/t Au, 5.0 g/t Au and 2.2 g/t Au along a 40-metre strike. Additionally, the first round of drilling on Broccoli Hill, totalling 690 metres, intersected gold mineralisation with four of the six holes returning assays greater than 1 g/t Au and as high as 4.04 g/t Au over 0.9 m and 0.91 g/t over 6.8 m.
According to Omai’s Chief Executive Officer, Elaine Ellingham, “…our initial trenching and drilling on Broccoli Hill, that commenced late in 2021, has already resulted in several significant gold values.”
This announcement, the CEO said, comes on the heels of Omai delivering on its goal of completing an NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate on Wenot by the end of 2021 – quite an achievement for the company’s first year.
Ellingham noted that Broccoli Hill is an area located only 300 metres north of the Wenot pit and less than 200 metres east of the Fennell pit. These two pits combined, produced over 3.7 million ounces of gold.
“After field work and trenching in October and November, we completed six initial wide-spaced holes on Broccoli Hill before the holiday break in December. We intersected gold in four of the six holes and consider this very successful for first pass drilling on a large, relatively untouched target area. With the knowledge gained, this week we started additional trenching, mapping and sampling,” Ellingham stated.
To this end, the CEO added that over the next couple of months, they will advance some of the property’s prime exploration targets, including Broccoli Hill, that hold potential for new near surface mineralisation amenable to open pit mining.
Broccoli Hill has been worked by artisanal miners for over 100 years, according to the mining company. It said that broad gold anomalies were identified by previous auger and soil surveys and the airborne geophysical signatures are similar to those of the Fennell deposit. The abundance of past placer gold workings in the lowlands flanking the hill, together with the numerous scattered artisanal workings on the hill itself, indicate a nearby gold source.
Exploration across this large 900m by 700m area has been hampered by a lack of knowledge of the underlying bedrock lithologies due to deep tropical weathering of the bedrock to clay-weathered saprolite to depths of 25 to 60m, complicated by transported laterite.
Trenching with an excavator on the north-western part of Broccoli Hill in November exposed a quartz-veinlet rich zone. The orientation of these northeast-trending, northwest dipping veinlets is consistent with some of the higher-grade zones within the Fennell deposit, located less than 300 metres to the west. A 1990s era shallow auger hole approximately 80 metres east of this trench assayed 12.4 g/t Au from a sample taken from a 4 to 6 m depth.
Six initial diamond drill holes totalling 690 metres were completed on Broccoli Hill in December, ranging in depth from 74 to 200 metres. Two of these holes were located to test the high grade, quartz-rich zone identified in the northwest trench and the other four holes were to test a combination of soil geochemical anomalies, interpreted structures from the geophysics and other possible quartz veining and felsic dikes identified from our trenching and mapping. These holes, spanning 850 metres across Broccoli Hill, provide considerable encouragement.
The gold is associated with intervals of quartz and quartz-ankerite veining and weak veinlet stockworks, and in hole 28 appears hosted in a deeply weathered felsic dike.
According to the Omai missive, this late 2021 trenching and drilling provides valuable information on Broccoli Hill, confirming the presence of gold mineralisation across the large target area.
“Mineralisation is consistent with the previously mined deposits, being associated with stockworks of quartz veinlets or brittle fractured and annealed felsic dikes. With this information, additional field work including trenching and mapping recommenced this week. Drilling is expected to re-start in 3 to 4 weeks,” the Canada-based mining company stated.
