Havilah Resources (ASX: HAV) announced that it is sidestepping what it dubbed “the virus turmoil” and continuing with its planned drilling campaign by using its own drill rig at its Kalkaroo project in South Australia.
In a press release, the Dulwich-based company said that following the receipt of drilling approvals from the Department for Energy and Mining, management decided to kick off its 2020 exploration drilling program.
Kalkaroo is believed to be the largest undeveloped open pit copper-gold deposit in Australia on a copper-equivalent ore reserve basis
According to Havilah, the strategy allows it to drill cost-effectively and provides flexibility in choosing the order of drilling targets.
“Given Kalkaroo is a large gold deposit in its own right, containing over 3.1 million ounces and recognising the current high Australian dollar gold price, directors consider it prudent to focus on gaining as much drilling information as possible about the shallow gold resources at Kalkaroo,” the media statement reads. “With Havilah’s drilling capability the key drilling information can be obtained efficiently and Havilah’s in-house geologists and mining engineers are able to model and evaluate the new data quickly.”
The firm said it will focus on resource delineation drilling of shallow gold mineralisation in the Tertiary age Namba Formation cover sediments; increasing the density of drill holes in the saprolite gold zone at West Kalkaroo to improve confidence in the gold resource within a conceptual starter open pit; testing the sparsely drilled mineralised Kalkaroo fault zone over approximately 2 kilometres length from West Kalkaroo to East Kalkaroo for shallow saprolite gold and REE mineralisation; and investigating a rearth earths mineralisation previously reported from West Kalkaroo.