Project and operations updateMining and minerals
Sentinel starts first aircore drilling at Menzies West gold project
The Western Australian explorer began a maiden program testing whether historical surface gold anomalies extend into weathered bedrock.
- Event
- First published on EPC Feed
- Sources
- 2 listed below
- Reading time
- 2 min
Sentinel Exploration said its maiden aircore drilling program had started at prospecting licence P29/2726 within the Menzies West Gold Project, about three kilometres southwest of Menzies in Western Australia. Its 23 October release said the drilling contractor had mobilised to site and begun work. The program is testing beneath historical surface gold anomalies to investigate whether they have a source in underlying weathered bedrock. No new assay results were reported in the announcement.
The company’s Menzies project package includes prospecting licences P29/2726 and adjoining P29/2727 and P29/2728. Sentinel said the tenements fall within the Menzies Section 57(4) declared area, where exploration licences cannot be granted and ground is held instead as prospecting licences of up to 200 hectares each. Its target area is near the interpreted contact between the Goongarrie Monzogranite and adjacent greenstones. This first-pass program is designed to sample through the cover sequence into weathered bedrock, helping the company distinguish gold anomalism in transported or near-surface material from mineralisation in underlying rock.
Sentinel said the drilling would test three surface lines. Final hole numbers, spacing, depths and total metres would depend on ground conditions and observations as drilling proceeded, so the release did not set a fixed program metreage. The company expected the work to take about five days, subject to operational conditions. Samples were to be sent to a laboratory, with results to be reported after receipt, validation and interpretation. The program is therefore an exploration test rather than a resource drilling campaign with disclosed assay outcomes.
The announcement describes the work as a way to improve understanding of geology beneath cover and assess whether additional exploration is warranted. Sentinel cautioned that operational requirements, drilling conditions and assay turnaround could affect timing, and that exploration might not identify economically significant mineralisation. The company identified the project as 100%-owned. Its update cites historic auger and soil anomalies as targets but does not publish new assay evidence from the current drilling.
The release describes this as an initial test of the bedrock source of historic surface anomalies, not a discovery announcement. It says the programme covers three surface lines but leaves hole count, spacing, depth and total metres dependent on field conditions. The release’s five-day duration is an expectation from commencement, and assay reporting follows laboratory receipt, validation and interpretation; no assay result or resource estimate is available in this update.
The company’s project profile locates Menzies West about 3 kilometres southwest of Menzies and identifies the three adjoining granted prospecting licences that make up its Menzies package. It also notes historical auger and soil results on P29/2726; the October release explains that the current holes are intended to test beneath those surface indicators. The profile and release describe exploration targets, not a mineral resource.
Sources
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