Significant Zones Of Strong Copper Mineralisation Visible In Recent Drilling
Ongoing drilling at Peel Mining Limited’s (ASX:PEX) 100%-owned Wirlong copper deposit in NSW, Australia, has returned further high-grade copper-mineralised intercepts.
Wirlong is part of Peel’s South Cobar Project, centred around 100km south of Cobar in Western NSW with drilling at part of the company’s “Hub & Spoke” strategy to advance each of the company’s deposits to mineable resources, to achieve critical mass in support of a new substantial centrally located processing plant.
Managing Director, Rob Tyson, said Wirlong also represents a core part of the company’s focus on advancing its copper resources.
“These results continue to build our confidence in the primary target of our Wirlong drilling, the high-grade Western Lens, whilst evidence of additional mineralised lenses is also becoming apparent,” Mr Tyson said.
“We also see further indication of broad halo stockwork chalcopyrite mineralisation within many of our drillholes, an indication of the greater metal endowment of the Wirlong mineral system.
“Our understanding of the geometry and controls on mineralisation at Wirlong continues to grow as we complete each drillhole, and once again, we look forward to reporting further results in due course.”
Mineralisation returned from the resource definition drilling so far is generally consistent with the position of electromagnetic conductor plates, and Peel’s geophysical and geological modelling.
New results include:
- WLDD017 – 117m @ 1.03% Cu, 5g/t Ag from 280m including: 21.4m @ 2.37% Cu,14g/t Ag from 294m including:, 10m @ 4.04% Cu, 24g/t Ag from 300m, 7m @ 2.52% Cu,7 g/t Ag from 338.92m and 5m @ 2.45% Cu,5 g/t Ag from 361m
- WLDD015 – 80m @ 1.15% Cu, 5g/t Ag from 262m, including: 11m @ 2.40% Cu, 14g/t Ag from 272m, 26m @ 1.72% Cu, 6g/t Ag from 302m, including: 10m @ 1.92% Cu, 7g/t Ag from 302m and 10m @ 2.40% Cu, 8g/t Ag from 318m
- WLDD016- 5.75m @ 5.54% Cu, 37g/t Ag from 353.25m
Drilling at Wirlong has been designed to test the upper ~300m of the Wirlong Central Zone where high- grade copper (chalcopyrite) mineralisation is understood to be structurally controlled on a NW-SE orientation. The resource definition drill program originally comprised ~15,000m of drilling. A review of Wirlong results to date has recently been completed with designed programme being modified to optimise the resource modeling. Drill results to date have highlighted the open nature of this evolving copper mineral system.
The true width of intercepts reported is estimated to be approximately 40-60% of the downhole widths. The geology of the Wirlong deposit comprises intercalated and sheared/deformed felsic volcanics and siltstones/sediments with associated alteration including silica, sericite and black chlorite.
Wirlong is located within Peel’s 100%-owned EL8307, located ~80km SSE of Cobar or ~35km N of Peel’s 100%-owned Mallee Bull copper deposit. It is defined by 2km strike of sheared volcanics and sediments; large multi-element soil geochemical anomalies; and coincident/semi-coincident geophysical anomalies. It has since proven to represent a very large hydrothermal system hosting significant copper mineralisation along more than 2.5km strike length and to depths of up to 950m
