Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.Sep 6 2024
Liberty Gold Corp. has reported the discovery of a high-grade antimony mineralizing system on the eastern extension of the Goldstrike Oxide Gold deposit in Southwest Utah.
Figure 1. Stibiconite crystals. Image Credit: Liberty Gold Corp.
The company has finished a staking procedure to the east of the main Goldstrike claim block, covering all locations with promise for this mineralized system. About 3.2 square kilometers of new land have been acquired.
Since Liberty Gold was concentrating on drilling out the primary oxide gold finding region to the west at Goldstrike, it neglected to examine the known gold mineralized zone known as Antimony Ridge. The company reevaluated its historic metals databases in response to the United States government’s recent designation of antimony as a key mineral.
This process revealed the Antimony Ridge mineralization's enormous potential. Drill hole tests on the Goldstrike Oxide deposit also revealed increased antimony values, up to 650 parts per million (0.065 %) Sb.
The remarkably large, bladed to gigantic stibiconite mineralization at Antimony Ridge is found in a jasperoid breccia containing gold. The main antimony sulfide mineral, stibnite (Sb2S3), is oxidized in situ to produce stibiconite (Sb3O6[OH]), an antimony oxide.
The stibiconite is found in a massive, bedding-parallel jasperoid breccia with a sample strike length of 450 meters. This mineral contact has been detected at multiple locations on the property, and ongoing fieldwork has revealed additional zones of antimony mineralization along fault offsets from this contact.
In 2015, the company conducted limited gold-focused surface sampling on the exposed jasperoid breccia body, revealing surface antimony levels of up to 2.2 % Sb and gold grades of up to 0.85 grams per ton. The mineralized zone has an apparent thickness of up to 12 m and continues open along the east-west strike and downdip to the north.
The jasperoid can be tracked along this contact for more than 2 km, and no exploration drilling has been conducted along the mineralized jasperoid zone in this eastern region.
The Antimony Ridge mineralization occurs higher in the stratigraphy than the major gold zone, along an easily traceable contact that is now being mapped and sampled on these recently acquired lands.
The Lejaiv Unite Mine on Antimony Ridge produced 10 tons of antimony ore on a limited scale in the 1970s, according to historic sources. The material was extracted from two small open trenches. According to anecdotal evidence, the mined material was stibnite ore with a 10 % Sb concentration.
It is the nature of the exploration business to find what you were not looking for in plain sight, simply due to retention of archives that suddenly become relevant.
Cal Everett, Chief Executive Officer and Director, Liberty Gold Corp.