Superior Resources has kicked off its Phase 2 RC drilling program at the Steam Engine gold project, with the objective of expanding open-pittable resources at the North Queensland site.

The company’s strategy for Steam Engine – which sits within its broader Greenvale project – is to achieve open-cut mining in the shortest timeframe by conducting parallel programs of resource expansion drilling and a feasibility study.

It comes after an updated scoping study, released last month, showing a pre-tax NPV of about $38 million to $42 million for the project.

Based on a gold price assumption of $3250, it showed financially and technically robust cases for both low CAPEX toll treatment and higher CAPEX stand-alone processing development scenarios, Superior said.

The Stage 2 drilling campaign is planned to include 40 RC holes for a total of about 3000m of drilling.

“We are excited about starting the Phase 2 program, which is targeting some of our most-anticipated high-priority targets at the project, with each of the areas investigated being new ground,” Superior managing director Peter Hwang said.

Related: Superior discovers new gold shoot at Steam Engine

“With the spot price of gold breaking all-time highs yet again and with global economic forecasts indicating a maintenance of that trend into the future, Steam Engine is on a strong pathway to unlock value in the extraordinary package of porphyry copper and nickel-PGE sulphide projects at Greenvale.

“With the large number of Tier 1-potential systems at Greenvale, an acceleration of exploration activity is necessary and we are fortunate to have an untapped gold development project sitting at the contact zone between the two mineral provinces.”

The mineral resource estimate for Steam Engine stands at 4.18 Mt at 1.5 g/t gold for 196,000oz gold.

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