NQ Exploration has released the premature results of the latest drilling campaign at its Carheil project. The primary hole of the proposed 20,000 m drill program shows more potential of the shallow silver zone of around 30 m down, which is just below the overburden, enhancing the estimation of the open-pit prospective.
The company encountered the highest grade of mineralization from the initial hole of all the near-surface holes, including 58.3 g/t silver over 32 m and 93.1 g/t silver over 16 m.
These assay results would like to authenticate that a thick, low-grade zone over 10 m could be defined between the 200 m level in a 25 to 30 m mineralized envelope, and the surface. These drilling results call for an evaluation of the deposition model and the silver zones’ metallogenic control with prosperous zones in both the sericitized and silicified regions, without or with the existence of copper sulphides and zinc.
NQ Exploration drilled the hole CA2011-018 nearer to the surface than any other hole. It has planned to carry on the definition drill program near the surface immediately after obtaining the results from two other holes, which is drilled to examine the Ag1 zone over the 200 m level. In addition, the hole CA2011-18 cut a copper zone, which yielded an intersection grading 14.4 g/t silver and 2.05% copper over 3.0 m at the altered felsic unit. This enrichment of copper in the alteration pipe was observed in numerous holes drilled previously by NQ.
The additional holes drilled so far analyzed this silver zone at depths of 200 to 600 m vertically. Since June 2011, the company has drilled approximately 3,160 m, totaling nine holes and continuing the drill program.
Val-d 'Or-based ALS Chemex lab conducted the assays. It has assayed all the samples in two techniques. Fire assay along with an FA-AA23 finish is used for assaying gold and multi-acid ICP for 35 elements. The delivery time of assays has been raised temporarily from 30 to 45 days, because of more number of samples.