LAKE CAREY PROJECT - WA
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The Lake Carey project, is located 220 km north north-east of Kalgoorlie and 80 km south of Laverton in a highly mineralised part of Western Australia's eastern goldfields known as the Laverton Tectonic Zone ("LTZ"). The LTZ is host to a gold endowment in excess of 25 million ounces and a number of the important deposits have been discovered in the last decade, including the 7.7 million ounce Sunrise Dam gold deposit.
The Lake Carey project tenements cover an area of 119 km2 and they include a 60km section of the highly prospective structure known as the Fortitude Shear, which is host to the Fortitude deposit.
Key features of the Fortitude Deposit include:
- Strike length in excess of 1,000m with a relatively higher grade "core area" of 600m strike length.
- Complete oxidation to 30m and partial oxidation to 70m.
- Ammenable to conventional CIL treatment with 94% recovery.
- Multiple lodes over 1km strike length hosted by 50m wide NNW striking shear zone.
- "F-Lodes": North plunging high-grade (5-20) g/t Au) dilatational ore shoots enveloped by lower grade (0.5-5.0 g/t Au) mineralization in an intermediate volcanic host rock.
- "M-Lodes": High grade, brittle deformed, mineralized shoots developed in basalt.
Midas has previously completed pit optimisation studies on a stand-alone mining operation which show positve cash flows for all cases before capital. However, a substantially increased Resource is needed for amortisation of the cost of a mill at Fortitude. An alternative is to treat ore at an existing treatment facility such as Sunrise Dam or Granny Smith.
The Company is continuing the necessary technical work and baseline studies so as to facilitate future permitting of a mining operation should current studies result in a decision to carry out a full feasibility study.
In addition to the Pre-feasibility work at Fortitude the Company has several other high quality exploration targets at Lake Carey: Intrepid-Recent drill testing of a magnetic anomaly at the Intrepid Prospect has identified significant gold anomalism with up to 43m @ 0.4 g/t Au from 66m in LCAC043. The gold mineralisation is open in all directions with the nearest line of drilling 1,000m to the east. Step-out drilling is warranted to test the depth extent of the anomaly.
Foritude South- To the south of Fortitude a 2.5km strike-length gap has been identified in the drill coverage over the Fortitude Shear Zone. An aircore drill program is scheduled in second half 2010 to test this target.
Fortitude North- To the north of the Fortitude deposit there is a 6km strike section of the Fortitude Shear Zone that has had very little drill testing because of the prescence of sand dunes that makes access difficult for conventional drill rigs. Midas has access to a tracked drill rig that is suitable for work in this area and drill testing of the highly prospective structure has confirmed continuation of the target structure to the north.
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