Drilling raises hopes of more Olympic gold
Drilling at BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam copper/uranium/gold project in outback South Australia has been yielding tantalising gold results.
Already in line for a huge upgrade in its resource base in September, the latest results point to gold becoming more important in Olympic Dam’s revenue mix, which is now dominated by copper.
BHP has yet to release details of the gold hits, but industry sources say the company is more than pleasantly surprised with the results, which include 100-200 metres intersections grading better than 1 gram of gold a tonne, as well as 1 per cent copper.
That compares with the current resource estimate, which has the copper grade higher at 1.1 per cent but the gold grade lower at 0.5 grams of gold a tonne.
At current metal prices, the additional gold grade would enhance the contained copper/gold metal value by more than 10 per cent.
But the real excitement is that the richer gold mineralisation is being encountered outside the geophysical “footprint” long considered to define the limits of Olympic Dam mineralisation – already among the world’s biggest for all three metals of copper, uranium and gold.
Source: www.theage.com.au
