Millennium Minerals drilling results could enlarge pit designs prior to gold production in 2012

Millennium Minerals (ASX: MOY) has released further drilling results from Crow and Condor deposits, at the Golden Gate area of the company’s Nullagine gold project.

Highlights from Crow included 6 metres at 7.17 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 48 metres, 3 metres at 2.41g/t gold from 43 metres, and 2 metres at 3.15g/t gold from 18 metres.

At Condor the best results were 9 metres at 4.77g/t gold from 75 metres, 6 metres at 3.28 g/t gold from 18 metres, and 4 metres at 4.06 g/t gold from 18 metres.

The latest intersections occur adjacent to, and immediately beneath the current proposed pit designs at Condor and Crow, and indicate potential to enlarge pit designs prior to planned gold production in 2012.

Exploration will now be ramped up at the Golden Gate area deposits, with an additional 6000 metres of reverse circulation drilling planned.

The Golden Gate area consists of six deposits known as; Golden Gate (ABCD Reef), plus the five Golden Gate satellites deposits of Falcon, Condor, Crow, Harrier and G-Reef and although the deposits are relatively small, they contain the highest grades in the whole project.

New Ore Reserve

Millennium will deliver a gold Reserve from all the Golden Gate deposits before the end of 2011, with the deposits hosted within the 1.25 million gold ounce Nullagine gold project in Western Australia.

New Mineral Resource estimates are also expected to be completed in the near future at Golden Eagle, Shearers, All Nations, Bartons, Otways and Little Wonder deposits.

Providing a boost to the potential Reserve from Golden Gate are near surface gold intersections from reverse circulation drilling at both the Crow and Condor deposits, which are open along strike and down dip.

The new ore Reserve estimates do not include the current drilling results, which are from a 15 hole program for around 1000 metres.

Millennium said that due to their high grades, the deposits at the Golden Gate area are expected to impact very strongly on anticipated project cash flow once construction of the 1.5 Mt processing facility is completed at Golden Eagle in 2012.


Golden Gate - strategically located

Condor and Crow are both located about 35 kilometres to the northeast of the 1.5 million tonne per annum CIL gold processing facility at Golden Eagle which is currently under construction.

Condor currently hosts a JORC Resource of 114,000 tonnes at 3.3g/t gold for 12,200 ounces, with Crow a JORC Resource of 39,000 tonnes at 4.5g/t gold for 5,600 ounces.


Development progress summary

In other Millennium news, currently two thirds of the plant site earthworks had been completed at the project.

The works included clearing, top soil stockpiling and cut to fill preparation of the foundations for the elution tanks area, the mill and primary crusher areas, with construction of the process water dam also completed and additionally the site road access upgrade has commenced.

By mid-November 2011, the company had made significant progress in the development of the project, including:

- On-site construction of the 140 man accommodation village was well advanced. A total of 72 en-suited rooms were delivered to site and have been installed, fit for occupation. The kitchen complex was also delivered to site and was fully operational 21 October 2011;
- 70 personnel engaged in earthworks, civil works and leach tank refurbishment;
- Plant site earthworks scheduled for completion in December 2011;
- Plant site concrete work is 23% complete;
- 25% completion of the access road upgrade; and
- 85% equipment orders placed.

A major plus is that the project is on schedule and within the capital budget as of 1 November 2011.

Originally published at: http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/22506/millennium-minerals-drilling-results-could-enlarge-pit-designs-prior-to-gold-production-in-2012-22506.html