Perth-based American West Metals has kicked off a maiden drilling program at its Storm project on Somerset Island in Nunavut, Canada, where a number of high-grade copper targets will be tested. The campaign follows up on a raft of solid historical hits including 110m at 2.45 per cent copper from surface and 56.3m grading 3.07 per cent copper from 12.2m in the zone branded 2750N.
Given the broad and wide-spaced historical intercepts of high-grade copper at 2750N, American West believes plunging more holes into the zone could enable it to rapidly define a significant amount of additional material.
The company says the copper mineralisation in the target area remains open at depth and along strike and because of the shallow mineralisation in the zone, sinking holes of up to 150m in depth could be enough to reach the potential honey pot.
In what should bode well for the project’s prospects, initial ore-sorting testwork using material from Storm suggested the explorer could churn out a direct-shipping ore, or “DSO” product with an impressive grade of about 53 per cent copper.
DSO products can be mobilised directly from a mine site to a refinery to extract the commodity. Management says the high-grade resource at Storm appears to be well suited to a low-footprint DSO operation.
The explorer will now look to bag additional samples in the current program, ahead of phase 2 beneficiation work that will build on the first-pass results from the ore sorting program.
American West plans to plunge between 15 to 20 holes at nearby zones —that are also thought to host shallow copper mineralisation.
In addition, the campaign will test a series of high-priority, flat-lying electromagnetic conductors uncovered during a 2021 fixed-loop electromagnetic survey.
The company previously said targeting the 2021 conductors could lead to the discovery of a major sedimentary copper system at Storm, with the targets believed to host a potentially lucrative massive sulphide deposit.
American West Metals' Storm project takes in the high-grade Storm copper discovery along with the Seal zinc-silver deposit that has historically delivered a score of notable intersections, including 14.4m at 10.58 per cent zinc with 28.7 grams per tonne silver from 51.8m and 22.3m grading 23 per cent zinc with 5.1 g/t silver from 101.5m.
The recent work marks the company’s first exploration at the operation since it picked up the reigns as project operator under an option agreement with the Toronto Stock Exchange listed Aston Bay Holdings.
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By Matt Birney
