Tennant Creek Gold is starting an $8 million exploration program at its Manbarrum zinc, lead and silver project in the Northern Territory.

Major resource drilling programs will start shortly as part of the company"s 2007 exploration field season. The core objective is to delineate a substantial inventory of zinc, lead and silver resources and confirm the project"s potentially world-class nature.

It will include an intensive program of resource extension drilling focusing on the Sandy Creek deposit where Tennant Creek Gold has a JORC-compliant resource of 10.5 million tonnes at 3% zinc, 0.74% lead and 5.5grams/tonne silver. The resource remains open at depth and to the north, south and west.

During the northern wet season, the company completed an initial positive economic evaluation of Sandy Creek and reviewed the broader exploration potential of Manbarrum, which comprises 400sqkm of highly prospective tenements 70km north-east of Kununurra.

The new exploration program will focus on confirming extensions to the Sandy Creek deposit to underpin an upgraded resource estimate and test four key IP targets at Sandy Creek North, Browns, Djibitgun and Llandandi. These priority target zones were identified during the northern wet season following a reassessment of historic IP geophysical, gravity and drill data for the Manbarrum Project.

Tennant Creek Gold managing director Neil Biddle says: "These target zones have similar IP responses to the Sandy Creek deposit and some feature historic RC drill values of up to 8.5% zinc, highlighting their importance as priority drilling targets."