East Asia Minerals starts drilling Sangihe gold project

Canadian mineral explorer East Asia Minerals Corporation (EAS) said on Thursday that drilling is underway at its Binebase-Bawone gold prospect on Sangihe Island in North Sulawesi .

 

The objectives of the program are to confirm mineralized intersections encountered by Ashton Mining (Australia) in the 1990s, and to validate their lateral continuity as indicated by the high gold values obtained from trench sampling, the company said.

 

"This continuity is controlled by gold-bearing structures interpreted to extend for 3 kilometres strike length. Mineralization in the target area is reinterpreted as near surface, shallow north dipping layers (lenses) and the majority of the historic drilling was at a northwest azimuth which would have drilled into the footwall or underlying lower grade gold mineralization," EAS said. 

 

The drilling is being conducted by Asiadrill Bara Utama, an Australian-Indonesian drilling company, and is expected to take approximately 6 to 8 weeks to complete. The drilling activities will then be moved to the company's projects in Nangroe Aceh Darussalam.

 

Ongoing surface mapping, trenching and sampling are extending high grade gold-silver mineralization at Sangihe. A breccia zone in Trench C at the Brown Sugar area, 400 metres southwest of the Bawone occurrence, has assayed 7.8 metres at 15.6 g/t gold and 195 g/t silver. Trenching has extended the barite breccia zone in Trench A an additional 25 metres to the northwest (assays of 10 channel samples are pending).

 

The company also reports a trench intercept of 7.8 metres grading 15.6 g/t gold and 195 g/t silver from the Brown Sugar Zone at the south end of the prospect.

 

Mapping and sampling also continues at the Aceh projects, the company said. At the Barisan Project, six rock chip samples from the Abong prospect returned an average of 1.22 g/t gold and 10 g/t silver, with a high of 3.52 g/t gold and 29 g/t silver. The mineralization was confirmed to be epithermal, sediment hosted gold in silica replacement (jasperiods) of calcareous sediments. Assay results for 105 rock channel samples from the Upper Tengkereng porphyry prospect have returned assay highlights of 51 metres at 0.12 g/t gold, 0.12% copper and 90 ppm molybdenum, and 2 metres at 1.46 g/t gold, 0.73% copper and 582 ppm molybdenum. At the Takengon project assay highlights from 30 channel samples along 70 metres at the Collins prospect include 5 metres at 3.37 g/t gold and 5 metres at 1.81 g/t gold. (denny)