Gold explorer James Bay Minerals (ASX: JBY) has joined the one million ounce club after unveiling a maiden 1.37 million ounce JORC compliant mineral resource estimate (MRE) for its Independence gold project in Nevada, including a high-grade skarn component of about 984,000 ounces at 6.67 grams per tonne gold.
Further upside potential
Management noted that the deeper skarn section of the resource remains open for further expansion, particularly in a northern direction where a historical drill hole intercepted similar high-grade skarn mineralisation 580m outside of the resource area.
Furthermore, James Bay’s review of historical drill holes suggests that gold occurrences outside the current resource lie within the same host rocks as the skarn, presenting key targets for future drill testing.
Shallow mineralisation
Separately, the group’s maiden resource also contains a near-surface epithermal component consisting of oxide, transition, and sulphide zones.
Here, a higher confidence ‘indicated resource’ with nearly 300,000 ounces of contained gold has been defined, coupled with and an ‘inferred resource’ taking in about 90,000 more ounces of the precious metal.
The epithermal zone is constrained by an optimised pit shell which the company believes could represent mineralisation that is suitable for open-pit mining and heap leach processing.
Ongoing drilling campaign
Notably, the maiden resource at Independence does not include data from the company’s inaugural drilling campaign – which remains ongoing – or mineralisation outside the optimised pit shell identified from historical works.
For instance, a recently announced drill hit at the Rebel Peak prospect has not been incorporated in the resource estimate. Here, James Bay reported an 18.3m intercept grading 1.0 g/t gold from 36.6m below the surface, which also includes a 3.1m zone at 2.7 g/t gold.
James Bay Minerals executive director, Matthew Hayes, commented:
“Our maiden JORC MRE of 984,412 ounces of gold at 6.67 g/t Au positions JBY as one of the ASX’s largest high-grade gold explorers. Notably, significant mineralisation exists beyond both the skarn and near-surface epithermal models, remaining open in all directions. These factors strongly suggest a connection between the surface mineralisation and deeper skarn material, indicating substantial resource growth ahead.”
Exploration drilling for growth
Moving forward, exploration drilling will seek to expand the epithermal mineralisation across the North Hill and Rebel Peak areas. In-fill drilling will also look to incorporate mineralisation from outside the optimised pit shell into the resource.
According to James Bay, recent drill hits suggest that the gold mineralisation at Independence extends to the east of the current resource towards the Rebel Peak zone, where sampling of outcrops returned grades as high as 16.6g/t gold.
Management believes these results point to a continuation of wide gold zones at the project, whilst highlighting the potential for significantly higher gold grades than in the resource estimate.
More broadly, mineralisation outside of the new resource estimate remains open in all directions which could provide substantial upside for the near-surface epithermal component.
Results from recent drilling at Independence are due in the coming weeks.