Noble Mineral Exploration Inc. (TSX-V:NOB, FRANKFURT: NB7, OTCQB:NLPXF) has announced that it is preparing a drill program at its Lucas Gold Project, located approximately 30 km north of Timmins, Ontario. The program is expected to total about 2,500 to 3,000 meters, and the company has been awarded a $215,000 Ontario Junior Exploration Program (OJEP) grant from the Ontario Government to support the work. The news matters because it signals renewed exploration activity in one of the world's most prolific gold districts, with the potential to expand known gold mineralization and test new targets.
The Lucas Gold Project is a drill-ready asset situated in a region famous for over 75 million ounces of gold production. It lies 20 km northeast of the world-class Kidd Creek Mine, which is celebrating its 58th year of continuous production with more than 150 million tonnes of ore, and about 20 km east of the Crawford Nickel Resource currently being developed by Canada Nickel. Full industry services, supplies and infrastructure are available in Timmins, with access via paved Highway 655, and there is ample access to power and water. Noble also has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed with local First Nations. A general location map with local infrastructure is available here.
After a recent site visit, the company determined that the drill program will require the establishment of a winter road for access. The road will need time to establish a stable, deep frozen base for heavy equipment access. This logistical requirement means the program will likely commence once winter conditions permit. The company completed 15 NQ size diamond drill holes totaling 3,184 meters in 2018, covering approximately 650m of strike length along the 1700m gold mineralized structure/trend identified from 2012 and 2018 Airborne Electromagnetic and Differential Magnetic Surveys. Noble located 37 historical drill-hole collars in the field and twinned three of these historical drill holes. No further work has been done since 2018. Drill holes and the trend of the mineralized zone on magnetic background can be viewed here.
The Lucas Gold Project hosts six discrete untested induced polarization (IP) anomalous trends that require follow-up exploration, of which only one trend has been investigated by diamond drilling to date. Gold mineralization in the Lucas Gold Deposit is interpreted to be structurally controlled and occurs as discrete lenses stacked within a pyrite-plus-gold mineralized tuffaceous unit. The 2018 drilling plan with the outline of the mineralized zone projected to surface is available here, and a plan of IP zones projected to surface with collars of 2018 drilling and magnetic background can be seen here.
The development of the Lucas Gold Project is divided into three phases. Phase 1 aims to establish gold grade and extend the gold mineralized strike length to approximately 1700m. Phase 2 will establish and verify gold mineralization in additional parallel IP anomalies. Phase 3 involves geological modelling and NI43-101 Resource Definition. Future work would include drilling on IP Anomaly A to further define the gold mineralization, as well as testing the other five undrilled IP anomalies for gold mineralization similar to IP Anomaly A. The technical content of the release was reviewed and approved by Wayne Holmstead, P.Geo., an independent Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. The original release is available on www.newmediawire.com.
