JBY - hits more gold and is now finding copper?
Our gold Investment James Bay Minerals (ASX: JBY) just released more drill results from its ongoing drill program at its project in Nevada, USA.
JBY’s project has a JORC resource of 1.37M ounces of gold - split across two components:
- Shallow oxide resource - ~384k ounces of gold at 0.32-0.4g/t gold. This is the type of ore that can be mined using similar methods from N.G.M’s Phoenix operation. Its also a style of mineralisation that is common in mines all across Nevada where these sorts of grades are still feasible to mine…
- Deeper skarn resource - 984k ounces of gold at 6.64g/t.
Right now, JBY is in the middle of a drill program on the shallower section of its resource - looking to find extensions to the east of its resource.
Today JBY put out a batch of results which again show that mineralisation is continuing to the east.
The biggest hit was from hole 7 which hit 22.9m at 0.5g/t gold - grades that are higher than JBY’s average across that shallow section of the resource.
We also noticed JBY had five other holes where assays are pending which JBY said “assay results are expected in early August”.
The holes we were looking forward to the most are the planned holes right along the eastern boundary of JBY’s ground.
That’s where JBY has picked up the highest grade rock chips (up to 16.6g/t gold) and where it shares a boundary with Nevada Gold Mines (N.G.M) - owned by Barrick and Newmont.
With this latest round of drilling, JBY is trying to drill and prove out its resource as close to the border it shares with N.G.M as possible.
What’s next for JBY?
The following slide from JBY’s most recent investor presentation gave a good overview of what to expect next from JBY:
More drilling across JBY’s shallow resource 🔄
We have already seen JBY prove mineralisation outside of its current resource (FROM SURFACE) with its most recent set of assay results.
Here are the extension to the north (in red) - the image on the left is before the drill results, the image on the right is AFTER the drill results and the black outline is where the current resource sits:
With the next round of drilling we are hoping to see the following:
Ultimately, we are hoping that translates into a bigger shallow resource that JBY can add to its scoping study
Metwork testing on the deeper Skarn resource 🔄
JBY has also flagged it would look to do some metwork testing on it’s deeper skarn resource.
From that program we are hoping to see recoveries that somewhat resemble the ones from N.G.M’s Fortitude pit which has mined ~2.3M ounces of gold from similar geology.
If the metwork is similar, the look through for us will be that JBY’s resource might also be feasible to mine.
Re-assaying old cores 🔄
JBY has flagged potential assay results from old deep diamond drillcores that were never tested for gold.
These should give us some more information on whether or not there is gold in between JBY’s shallow and deep resources:
