Gold and copper explorer, White Cliff Minerals has unearthed some encouraging copper results from an extensive soil sampling program at its early-stage Midas copper-gold project in WA’s revered Paterson Province. The company says its maiden reconnaissance program comprising just over 500 samples identified a 3km long copper-bearing structural corridor containing around three dozen copper hits of above 830 parts per billion under transported cover.
White Cliff’s soil sampling expedition, which was completed three months ago, was carried out by XM Logistics under the guidance of the company’s exploration geologist. The 502 samples were spaced 200 metres apart on 400m-spaced east-west lines for approximately 105-line kilometres of sampling.
Ionic Leach soil geochemistry sampling was the preferred method undertaken across the previously untested North West Graben and the Midas Graben areas that the company says were suited to the low-level “mobile ion” technique due to the alluvial cover.
White Cliff says results for the soils came back a lot later than expected due to an extraordinary backlog of assays clogging up WA’s assay labs, a sure sign that the market is on the rise.
White Cliff Minerals Technical Director, Edward Mead (Ed) said: “Our previous detailed technical review highlighted 21 prospective targets across the two tenements, with the seven priority targets the focus of this sampling program. Due to logistical challenges, only five of these targets were sampled during the program.”
“The Ionic Leach and conventional soil sampling has highlighted anomalous copper results which are associated with structural features. Given the level of cover in parts of the tenement, the first-pass results were pleasing.”
The world-class Paterson Province has reasserted itself as a fertile minerals exploration hunting ground in the wake of the recent spectacular copper-gold discoveries of Winu and Havieron.
Winu and Havieron are owned by Rio Tinto and by a joint venture between Newcrest Mining and Greatland Gold, respectively. The two deposits are considered to host an intrusion-related copper-gold style of mineralisation in buried Yeneena Basin sediments on the Anketell Shelf.
The Paterson Province, which also takes in Newcrest’s giant Telfer gold-copper mining operation, is not for the fainthearted. Apart from the searing heat, White Cliff suggests the region is remote even by WA standards and has only been superficially explored in the past. Any new discoveries there, particularly those concealed by transported cover, are pulse quickening.
White Cliff hopes to follow up the initial batch of geochem numbers from Midas with soil sampling at the two remaining priority targets that remoteness and harsh terrain precluded it from accessing the first time around.
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By Matt Birney
