American West Metals' share price jumped more than 23 per cent in morning trade today as the company revealed it had sniffed out what it says could be a mammoth underground copper deposit at its Canadian-based Storm copper project.
The company is so taken by its latest find, it has dubbed its potential deposit, the “Mother Lode”. It likened its key geological features to renowned sediment-hosted copper systems in Botswana, the Congo and Zambia.
Several high-grade copper targets, some already confirmed by drilling, are known to exist on-site and management is now confident there is more upside ahead. Copper-green chunks of chalcocite –a copper-bearing mineral – are exposed at some points of the surface at Storm.
American West says the strong indications of an underground copper deposit were detected in a high-resolution ground gravity survey, which is an early-to-mid-stage exploration method that ultimately gives explorers an idea of where to place the drill rigs.
Management believes its near-surface copper targets at Storm add weight to the potential for a mine project that will provide early returns to shareholders … especially given that the shallow-lying copper could be easily-processed from the outset.
It says evidence collected through its survey points to sediment-hosted copper deposits spanning a significant area deeper underground than the already-known copper at surface. Last year, a drill hole sunk on-site hit the outer edge of one of the deposits detected in the survey and turned over a 68m thick copper-hosting intersection from 277m.
The company says the survey results also complement earlier assessments of historical electromagnetic data collected at the project. Historic shallow drilling results were used to further shore up its understanding of what may lie beneath.
American West Metals managing director David O'Neill said: "The high-resolution survey has successfully defined a series of large, dense bodies that sit directly under the high-grade 4100N Zone, and in key areas around the other known high-grade copper deposits. Importantly, our interpretation of the gravity data is supported by coincident historical geophysical anomalies and the 2022 discovery of copper sulphides in drill hole ST22-10, which is located on the edge of one of the newly identified gravity targets."
Critically, the company says its ground gravity survey evidence is consistent with copper sulphide-style mineralisation. Sulphides are something of a “gold standard” for copper explorers, given that the style of mineralisation is easier to process and refine downstream before turning it into the coveted orange metal that acts as a backbone of the global electricity market.
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