EXPLORATION AND SAMPLING
“ Drilling in Nevada’ s basins requires drilling through tens to hundreds of metres of usually groundwater-saturated sand and gravel cover in order to get down to the bedrock below, and these drilling conditions present unique challenges. Following up and expanding upon the company’ s pioneering use of direct-push equipment to collect groundwater samples to explore for gold in Nevada’ s basins, NGE is again leading the industry by adapting new small-diameter RC equipment to operate in Nevada’ s basins.”
Explaining the significance of this development, NGE’ s CEO, Wade Hodges:“ Our Scorpion rig represents the logical evolution of our under-cover exploration program in Nevada. Similar to a bull’ s eye, we are using regional
NGE expects its new Scorpion drill rig to significantly reduce the costs of collecting earlystage bedrock, overburden( sand and gravel above the bedrock), and groundwater samples at the company’ s exploration projects
groundwater chemistry to reduce Nevada’ s large basins to discrete new targets; we are using our direct-push equipment to collect detailed groundwater samples to focus our follow up work at our targets; and now we are using our Scorpion to collect important bedrock and overburden geochemistry samples, as well as threedimensional groundwater chemistry samples, to test our projects for the presence of large mineralised footprints consistent in size and make up with the geochemistry and alteration halos associated with the multi-million ounce gold deposits surrounding our projects. These are the clear, systematic milestones required to advance a successful pipeline of exploration projects through to discovery, and by lowering the costs of collecting our early-stage drilling inputs, our goal is to test more targets for less money, offering shareholders maximum exposure to the upside of discovering major new gold deposits in Nevada.”
NGE has also developed proprietary hydrogeochemistry( groundwater chemistry) exploration technology to explore for gold in Nevada’ s covered basins where traditional exploration techniques are challenged. NGE is aggressively applying this latest technology in covered deposit exploration to identify, acquire, and advance new exploration properties in Nevada’ s highly prospective yet underexplored covered basins.
Dando Drilling International’ s original Terrier has firmly established itself as a valuable addition to exploration fleets where samples are required in soft and unconsolidated geologies such as silt, gravel or sand. Now, says the company,“ after more than a decade of drilling around the globe, Dando engineers have taken the most loved features of the percussive Terrier- small, nimble, safe, versatile, fast and simple to operate and maintain – and, after considering feedback from our customers, spent the last year designing, building and testing the evolution of this much loved drive-sampling rig.”
After several months in the field where the rig has undergone continued refinement, the Terrier MK2 has now entered full production.“ Designed for sampling in soft conditions that
CORE
SAFETY
Diamec Smart 8 can be equipped with a state of the art rod handling system that relieves the operator and removes many of the hazardous operations in the drilling process.
All drilling operations are performed from a safe distance with an easy to use, light weight control panel.
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