The company was suspended yesterday to thrash out the precise wording of its exploration target with the Australian Securities Exchange, and returned to the bourse today with its shares jumping 10% as investors caught gold fever.

 

The exploration target has a range of 53.3Mt at 2 grams per tonne to 105Mt at 1gpt.

 

The program, funding by a recent A$10 million placement, will continue looking for epithermal gold along known mineralised corridors, hunting for clusters along regional structures associated with the known Kulumadau, Busai, Woodlark King and Munasi deposits.

 

Past drilling and limited surface exploration have supported the presence of gold outside the defined resources along the major regional structures that have been defined by geophysical imaging.

 

Managing director Ron Heeks said the recent prefeasibility study was just the starting point for an operation producing over 100,000ozpa for a decade, and while definitive studies are ongoing the time was right to look to improve the scale and economics of the project.

 

Work has begun at the promising Great Northern area which sits on a structural corridor that's evident in geophysics, has surface geochemistry and limited drilling that produced results of up to 20m at 4.39gpt.

 

Magnetic imaging of the 5km-long gold corridor between Great Northern and the 623,000oz Busai deposit shows a continuation of structural features and magnetic lows that form a high priority target area. 

 

Once Great Northern has been drilled, exploration will extend along the corridor southeast towards the Eastern target, where magnetic imaging shows numerous intersecting structural features with an associated magnetic low under shallow limestone cover. 

 

In addition to the recommencement of exploration drilling, the company is set to undertake the first island-wide comprehensive geological and geochemical sampling program on Woodlark, with a focus on the outcropping Okiduse volcanic sequence.

 

Shares in the junior hit 3.3c, valuing the company at $59 million.