Altair Minerals Begins Multi-Rig Drilling Campaigns at South Oko and North Peters Prospects

Altair Minerals (ASX: ALR) has commenced exploration drilling at its Greater Oko gold project in Guyana, comprising a maiden 15,000-metre reverse circulation campaign at the South Oko prospect and a 2,000m maiden campaign, alongside an ongoing 5,600m diamond drilling program at North Peters.

Three rigs are now active across the project, materially increasing drilling capacity to a goal of 8,000m per month by October as the company ramps-up towards steady-state operations.

Drilling at South Oko commenced immediately after maiden trenching results advanced the W1 target — the largest >100 parts per billion gold soil contour anomaly defined along the Oko Shear Contact to date — from a broad surface geochemical anomaly into a discrete high-priority drill opportunity.

Six deep trenches earlier this year intersected gold mineralisation across a broad 1.2 kilometre east-west by 1km north-south footprint, highlighted by assays of 10m at 10.15 grams per tonne, 16m at 1.32g/t, 10m at 1.42g/t, and 10m at 1.13g/t.

Altair has planned rapid, systematic, first-pass coverage to test the vertical continuity of in-situ mineralisation encountered in the trenches, as well as potentially concealed mineralised shear zones extending under a 4m-thick leached duricrust.

Oko Shear Contact Focus

The identification of priority shallow mineralisation at South Oko will be followed-up at greater depths using diamond drilling to explore the broader 14km Oko Shear Contact, of which only 3.5km has been covered to date by geochemistry.

The contact has been historically explored by two companies that drilled out a cumulative 6km strike of the structure to define 9.1 million ounces gold over four separate deposits.

It has also shown lateral extent in mineralisation, confirming the entire corridor remains prospective to host mineralisation with historical intercepts 10km north of the contact returning 60m at 5g/t gold, 99.9m at 2.2g/t gold, 51m at 3g/t, and 84.5m at 3g/t gold from 915.5m.

Altair expects further compelling drill targets to be defined at South Oko on completion of ongoing geochemical programs extending southerly along the Oko Shear Contact.

Multi-Front Discovery Drilling

Altair Minerals chief executive officer Faheem Ahmed said the company was moving Greater Oko from preparation and target generation into genuine multi-front discovery drilling.

“The timing at South Oko could not be better after trenching at W1 intersected mineralisation across a broad footprint, sharpening our understanding of where the highest-priority structures may continue beneath cover and establishing a strong correlation between geophysics and mineralisation which we can use as a vectoring guide,” he said.

“We now have a western corridor where surface exploration was effectively stopped by duricrust and remains open, together with a potentially separate eastern structure around Trench 09, [and] drilling will give us the first opportunity to properly test whether these surface expressions develop into a coherent mineralised system at depth.”

“We believe W1 has earned the right to be tested aggressively by a program designed to cover ground quickly, establish continuity and geometry, and identify the structures that warrant deeper diamond drilling.”

“If the geology responds as we envision, we will be utilising the full extent of our drilling capacity and broader exploration platform to move quickly.”

Broader Exploration Strategy

Mr Ahmed said North Peters drilling would complement the broader exploration strategy at Greater Oko.

“RC drilling at North Peters is progressing alongside diamond drilling, giving us two rigs advancing a target already underpinned by broad and locally high-grade historical mineralisation,” he said.

“For the first time, we are drilling two major Greater Oko fronts concurrently while regional geochemistry, mapping, and target generation continue to build the next pipeline of opportunities.”

“Three rigs are now operating, a potential fourth rig at South Oko is also anticipated, drilling throughput is scaling rapidly, and the cadence of results should increase accordingly.

The company regards the next 12 months as “the most important exploration period in its history, with multiple opportunities for genuine value creation now being tested at the drill bit.”