Newcrest backs out of West Tanami JV

Newcrest has been funding the West Tanami exploration program on behalf of Encounter Resources across the Selby, Watts and Lewis tenements.

For the past 24 months, Newcrest has completed an 18,400-kilometre line airborne magnetic survey, heritage clearances and broad spaced reverse circulation drilling in the area.

The gold miner now holds no residual interest in West Tanami.

With Encounter Resources regaining full control of the gold project, it is set up to accelerate activity during 2021 and complete drilling in priority prospects.

This includes the Afghan prospect, which hosts a 7.5-kilometre-long gold anomaly, the Mojave prospect with its seven-kilometre gold-arsenic anomaly, and the Camel prospect, which was last drilled in 2010 and returned results of 7.2 metres at 3.1 grams per tonne of gold.

“We are delighted to be back in control of this major prospective land position, in a strong gold market, with immediate high-quality drill targets for follow up in 2021,” Encounter managing director Will Robinson said.

“The project contains open, high-grade gold intersections under shallow cover and large untested geophysical anomalies with supporting geochemistry.”

Covering 100 kilometres of strike along the Trans-Tanami structural corridor – home to Newmont Goldcorp’s Callie gold deposit in the Northern Territory – Encounter anticipates that it won’t be partnerless for long.

“We anticipate strong partner interest in the West Tanami gold project, which represents a rare belt scale gold project in a Tier 1 jurisdiction,” Robinson said.

The West Tanami geology is made up of a rare, belt-scale gold mineralisation, which has been largely underexplored.

Encounter is preparing to interpret its 2019 geophysical data sets and evaluate undercover geochemical methods applied in the nearby Paterson province, for possible application in Tanami.