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GOLDEN FUTURE FOR KULA GOLD’S WOODLARK ISLAND
ONGOING drilling has confirmed further high grade gold
mineralization immediately east of the 685,000 ounce
Kulumadau resource at Kula Gold’s Woodlark Island Gold
Project in Papua New Guinea. The company plans to
continue its exploration program to establish a resource
at Kulumadau East, thereby adding to the existing overall
Woodlark Island resource of 1.84 million ounces.
Step-out drilling between the Kulumadau resource
and the new Kulumadau East discovery has confirmed
two new zones of significance. The latest mineralization
is reasonably shallow and may result in all of the Kulumadau
zones being included in a single pit, enhancing
project economics. Significant new assay results
include 9 metres from 134 metres @ 40 grams/tonne
gold, including 1 metre @ 284 grams/tonne; 10 metres
from 85 metres @ 3 grams/tonne; 16 metres from 28
metres @ 2.6 grams/tonne; and 10 metres from 139
metres @ 3 grams/tonne.
Kula Gold’s managing director Lee Spencer says,
“While continuing to add additional resources, the company
is focused on delivering a feasibility study and advancing
the project into the permitting stage in 2012.”
Engineering studies are continuing with the definitive feasibility
study due to be completed at the end of quarter 1.
Woodlark Island is in the Trobriand Island Group in
the Solomon Sea, Milne Bay Province, 550km northeast
of Port Moresby. The island is reasonably large, about
1750sqkm, but remote and relatively isolated.
Kula Gold’s flagship project is Woodlark Island in the Solomon Sea, 550km northeast of Port Moresby.
Drilling at the Busai deposit of Kula Gold’s Woodlark Island project.
However, this was not always the case. In the late 19th
Century alluvial gold was discovered resulting in a gold
rush and declaration of the Murua Goldfield on November
6, 1895. The gold rush included more than 500 miners
and 2000 labourers from Cooktown and the nearby first
proclaimed Louisiade Goldfield Islands of Sudest and Misima.
Unlike most other goldfields of this era in PNG, gold
production was sustained over a number of years by the
accidental discovery of gold-bearing veins and lodes exposed
by sluicing off a young sedimentary sequence
which covers the bulk of the island.
The Kulumadau Gold Mining Company operated continuously
until it shut down in May 1918 with production
of about 75,000 ounces for a recovered grade of 17
grams/tonne gold. The mine operated on seven levels
from two shafts and although still in ore at depth, increasing
costs with the onset of World War I sealed its fate.
Including gold produced from alluvials documented
in Government sources, a total of 231,000 ounces
were produced from Woodlark until 1963. Some
216,000 ounces were produced prior to 1926, which
represents 37% of all gold produced from the colonial
period of Papua up until this period. In addition, the Kulumadau
mine produced on average 16% of gross export
earnings from Papua from 1902 to 1918.
Modern gold exploration was initiated on Woodlark
Island in 1962 with the Bureau of Mineral Resources
undertaking surface geochemistry, limited geophysics
and diamond drilling in 1962 and 1963 at Kulumadau.
Since 1970 Woodlark Island has been subject to 40
years of mostly continuous modern exploration without
sufficient resources being established to warrant investment
in a mining operation until recently. Exploration
in the past has been concentrated around the
old historical mining centres of Kulumadau, Busai and
Boniavat, with the early exploration strategy being
heavily dependent upon surface geochemistry, geophysics
and geological mapping.
The large amount of young sedimentary cover overlying
prospective Miocene volcanic terrain has severely
restricted the use of traditional exploration methods to
the extent that until 1997, global resources at Woodlark
Island were 6.7 million tonnes @ 1.73 grams/tonne
gold for 378,500 ounces estimated at the two historical
centres of Kulumadau and Busai.
Recognizing that the key to exploration success was
low-cost RC drilling on coincident structural dilation
centres and aeromagnetic lows through the overlying
young cover, Woodlark Mining, the 100%-owned subsidiary
of ASX-listed Kula Gold, embarked on an ambitious
drilling program resulting in more than 200,000
metres of RC and 20,000 metres of diamond drilling
over a six year period. Drilling to date has targeted mineralization
at the historical mining centres of Kulumadau,
Busai and Boniavat although new zones have
18 | ASIA Miner | January/February 2012