Great Pacific Announces Beginning of Drilling at Arau Project

Great Pacific Gold Corp. has reported that drilling has begun at its Arau project in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

Since purchasing Arau, the GPAC team has built nine drill pads and finished restoring the project's road access. Drilling has started following a welcoming ceremony in the community to commemorate the beginning of exploration, and a reverse circulation (RC) drill rig was transported to the site last week, with access to the exploration target regions completed.

For its PNG operations, the company is drilling for the first time. While the drill at the Arau Project is turning, the company is preparing the Kesar Creek Project, which is northwest of the extremely productive K92 Mining Inc. tenements and next to them, for a drilling program. This week marks the completion of the Kesar Creek Project’s phase 2 soil program, which will help outline goals for the next drill program.

In addition to the ongoing drilling at the Arau Project and the Phase 2 soil program at the Kesar Creek Project, the Company has begun road repair work at the formerly producing Wild Dog Project in East New Britain Province in preparation for exploratory operations there.

Arau Project

The Arau Project comprises two exploration licenses in the Kainantu area, including the Mt. Victor Prospect, where prior drilling discovered a multi-phase intrusion complex with copper and gold mineralization.

Under the project’s skarn mineralization, drilling will try to confirm the presence of copper-gold porphyry mineralization. Establishing the gold resource linked to the outcropping skarn mineralization was the goal of earlier drilling at Mount Victor. There will likely be a drilling program of about 2000 meters.

An initial comprehensive soil sampling program comprising 377 samples has been completed as part of the Arau project in the southern exploration license, EL2715. This program followed up on previously generated copper-gold geochemical data of stream sediment anomalous drainages and ridge and spur soil sampling programs.

The extremely promising Elandora porphyry unit, known to support epithermal gold mineralization and copper porphyry, underlies the region. Assays for this program will be sent in the following weeks.

In addition to the two exploration licenses that now comprise the Arau Project, the Company has recently applied for additional potential terrain contiguous with the existing land package and to the north through Exploration License Application 2834.

About GPAC

Great Pacific Gold's portfolio includes high-grade gold assets in Papua New Guinea ("PNG") and Australia.

Great Pacific Gold has assembled a mineral exploration property package spanning 2500 square kilometers in PNG. The land package consists of exploration licenses (ELs) and comprises early—and advanced-stage exploration sites with high-grade epithermal vein and porphyry-style mineralization.

The Arau Project comprises two exploration licenses in the Kainantu area, including the Mt. Victor Prospect, where prior drilling discovered a multi-phase intrusion complex with copper and gold mineralization.

The Wild Dog Project consists of two granted exploration licenses, EL 2761 and 2516, situated on the island of New Britain, approximately 50 km southwest of Rabaul and Kokopo, PNG.

The Kesar Creek Project is adjacent to the tenements held by K92 Mining Inc. and consists of a single exploration license, EL 2711. Several high-grade samples from outcrop and underground workings at Kesar have been recovered from Great Pacific Gold's initial operations, and these samples correspond with high-grade soils and aeromagnetic geophysical highs.

The Tinga Valley Project comprises a single exploration license, EL 2720. The OK Tedi Copper-Gold Mine, 140 kilometers to the northwest along the same belt, provides an excellent geological comparison to the Tinga Valley property.

Great Pacific Gold began in Australia with two 100 % owned high-grade gold projects, the Lauriston and Golden Mountain Projects, and has since acquired a large area of granted and application tenements containing additional epizonal (low-temperature) high-grade gold mineralization as well as associated intrusion-related gold mineralization in the state of Victoria.

The Great Pacific Gold land package, assembled over a multi-year period, includes the Lauriston Project, a 535-square-kilometer property immediately south of and within the same geological framework as Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd's Fosterville Gold Mine and associated exploration tenements.

Situated at the northern extremity of the Walhalla Gold Belt, the Golden Mountain Project is an intrusion-related gold project on the edge of the Strathbogie granite.

One of the acquired projects is the epizonal gold Providence Project, which includes the Reedy Creek goldfield and borders Southern Cross Gold’s Sunday Creek exploration project. Another is the Walhalla Gold Belt Project, a sizable collection of recently combined granted tenements that contain a variety of epizonal and intrusion-related gold mineralization.

There are two other gold-focused projects owned by Great Pacific Gold: the Moormbool Project, which has epizonal-style gold mineralization and possible intrusion-related gold mineralization, and the Beechworth Project, which is located in the northeast of the state and has mesozonal and intrusion-related gold mineralization.

Despite limited modern exploration and drilling, all GPAC’s properties in Australia are 100 % owned and have historically produced gold from hard rock sources.

Journal Reference:

Zhu, Q., et. al. (2024) The solvation environment of molecularly dispersed cobalt phthalocyanine determines methanol selectivity during electrocatalytic CO₂ reduction. Nature Catalysis. doi:10.1038/s41929-024-01190-9