Selinsing and Buffalo Reef are in the Central Gold Belt of Malaysia, which is a major north-south trending structural zone up to 30km wide and 450km in length that hosts numerous major gold mining districts, with mines such as Penjom and Raub, having each produced over one million ounces of gold.
Regional Exploration
Regional Geology
Malaysia is endowed with a number of major sediment-hosted, orogenic gold deposits that lie parallel to but east of the Bentong-Raub Suture Zone in the Central Gold Belt. Selinsing represents one of the most significant gold deposits in Malaysia and is situated at the intersection of a steep shear zone with favourable, reactive body of rock.
Selinsing regional exploration covers a radius of 30km around the Selinsing Gold Mine at the Kuala Lipis and Koyan area.
Gold mineralization can be found preferentially within, or immediately adjacent to the shear zones, especially where antiformal and synformal hinges in the preferential host rock create zones of dilation and brittle failure. Selinsing regional exploration continues to focus on discovering a major gold system by identifying the major shear zones that pass through the Selinsing area and mapping broad lithological packages with particular emphasis on medium to coarse-grained felsic volcanic tuff or felsic intrusions.
Recent exploration has targeted the Selinsing-Buffalo-Peranggih shear zone and several other parallel shear zones that are known to host gold mineralisation.
Medang Ridge system: The north-trending Medang Ridge shear zone located 1km east of Selinsing and Buffalo Reef runs for about 5km and hosts several prospects, including; Koyan South, Medang Ridge South, Central, and North. The shear zone extends south, and several deposits, including Bukit Nangka and the Tersang-Chenua gold prospect, lie between the Raub gold mine and Selinsing.
Rubber Hill-Ular Seluar system: This second parallel structure, 3km to the east of Selinsing and Buffalo Reef, hosts the Ular-Seluar and Rubber Hill prospects. Significant drilling was carried out by the previous operator in this area, and a priority is to follow-up on the promising results.
Selinsing-Buffalo-Peranggih system: Peranggih and Mentique represent high-priority oxide exploration targets, where gold mineralization is associated with a hydrothermal breccia system, distinct from the hydrothermal vein system that occurs at Selinsing and Buffalo Reef. Folding, shearing and vein formation in these rocks indicate that the deposit is of similar type and generation to the Selinsing structures.
Low- and high-grade gold mineralization is also hosted in both matrix and clast supported quartz breccia. The mineralised shear zone extends over approximately 1.2km in length, with varying widths of between 25m to 50m with identified areas of high gold grade mineralization surrounded by a halo of lower grade mineralization. The mineralisation is open down dip and along strike.
Near Mine Exploration
Geology
Selinsing/Buffalo Reef/Felda Block 7
The Selinsing and Buffalo Reef mineralization is north-south oriented and 1km east of the Raub-Bentong Suture. At Selinsing, local structures control the shear-hosted vein mineralisation, which is hosted at the contact between Permian sedimentary rocks and volcanic tuffs and limestones. The mineralised shear zone lies within a series of finely interbedded argillites and very fine-grained arenites, sequences of quartz-rich variably silicified sediments, and a few thin beds of quartzite conglomerate. At the Buffalo Reef deposits the rocks are more clayey.
The geochemical characteristics of the rocks within the tuffaceous package are most likely the reason this unit is strongly altered and mineralised, with grain size likely to be important for hydrothermal fluid flow and the subsequent formation of the orebodies, which show a clear correlation between increase in grain size and the intensity of alteration and veining.
The east-northeast, steeply dipping shear zones adjacent to and within the deposits at Selinsing and Buffalo Reef are the primary structural controls on mineralisation, acting as conduits for mineralising fluids during regional scale hydrothermal activity. The orebodies have a moderate plunge north-northwest to south-southeast and dip east-northeast or west-southwest reflecting the geometry of folded host rock.
Felda Block 7 is to the east of Buffalo Reef Central (“BRC”) and Buffalo Reef South (“BRS”) and contains the extension of the Buffalo Reef oxide and sulphide ore bodies.
Near Mine Exploration
The Selinsing near mine exploration aims to optimize the economic results of the sulphide project and expand the resources and reserves under and surrounding the current open pit areas, with mineralization open in all directions.
Sulphide
Future drill programs at Selinsing and Buffalo Reef will focus on adding resources and defining sulphide mineralization below and around the existing pits, within gap zones, and investigating underground opportunities to the south. An in-house underground desktop study has identified significant potential in the Selinsing area and sulphide exploration programs include testing for down-dip and strike/plunge extensions, resource definition drilling at BRC, Felda Block 7 and the Selinsing Deep’s high-grade sulphide gold resource. Drilling at Felda Block 7 will also enable the BRS open pits to be extended at depth.