ASX-listed American West Metals has extended the shallow mineralisation footprint at its Storm project in Canada after two holes plunged across a highly prospective zone known as “2750N” intersected broad intervals of visual copper. The explorer says its recent campaign has extended the strike length of the area’s copper to more than 200m.
The first hole intercepted 43.5m of mineralisation, including a 15.5m parcel of breccia and copper sulphide material across multiple depths.
The second bore struck a 30m interval consisting of several zones of breccia and copper sulphides totalling 13m.
Management says the anomalous copper at 2750N is linked to a geochemical anomaly of more than 1km in length and believes the mineralisation to be open along both strike and depth.
American West is continuing to build a solid case for an open pit mine at the zone and points to its ongoing success with the drill bit and the area’s shallow copper occurrences as the main reasons for its confidence. Drilling at 2750N has so far confirmed the continuity and extension of several high-grade hits including 110m at 2.45 per cent copper from surface and 3.07 per cent from just 12.2m.
Management argues that given every hole sunk at 2750N has yielded broad copper mineralisation the discovery of a significant volume of copper could be just around the corner.
The Perth-based mineral explorer believes the definition of a shallow copper resource at 2750N could be extremely economical with metallurgical test work on the site’s ore suggesting it could readily support a low-cost, small footprint direct-shipping, or “DSO” mining operation.
Ore classified as DSO can be shipped directly to customers after limited and inexpensive processing methods including crushing, screening, sorting and blending.
Recent activity at Storm’s 2750N zone suggests the company could deliver an impurity-free DSO product with a strong grade of 53 per cent copper.
American West is now looking to test several other high-grade zones at Storm, including “2200N” and “4100N” where historical exploration holes have struck additional near-surface, high-grade copper.
2200N is under 500m south of 2750N whilst 4100N is around 2km north-east.
Previous drilling in the area has delivered a raft of strong copper intersections across a 15 square kilometre area including 19m at 3.41 per cent copper from surface, 110m going 2.45 per cent copper from surface and 56.3m running 3.07 per cent copper from just 12.2m.
American West's Storm project is believed to host a high-grade copper system traced from a larger deep-lying sedimentary source. The area takes in a raft of surface-dwelling gossans – oxidised rocks that point to mineralisation. The tenure also encompasses several yet-to-be tested EM anomalies.
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By Matt Birney
