Ballard Mining (ASX:BM1) began a drilling exploration campaign, including 50,000 meters of drilling on an initial 18 identified prospects at its Mt. Ida gold project in Western Australia, according to a Thursday Australian bourse filing.

It began a 130,000-meter drill program across its Mt. Ida project, targeting highly prospective and underexplored zones along both the Baldock thrust and the Ballard fault.

Infill drilling at Baldock returned intercepts of three meters at 17.7 grams per tonne grade of gold from 49 meters, as well as four meters at 12 g/t grade of gold from 182 meters.

It submitted a works approval application for up to 1.5 million tonnes-per-annum processing and tails storage.

Its shares fell over 1% in recent trading on Thursday.