American West Metals Limited (ASX: AW1) has commenced high-impact drilling and exploration activities at the Storm Copper Project on Somerset Island, Nunavut.
This drilling programme is the first since American West Metals became project operator, under the option agreement with Aston Bay Holdings.
“We are very pleased to report that drilling is underway at the Storm Copper Project in Nunavut, Canada,” Managing Director, Dave O’Neill, said.
“This initial phase of drilling is designed to define copper resources within the 2750N Zone where high-grade copper starts from surface.
“We believe that a shallow resource here has excellent potential to support a low-footprint DSO mining proposal, with initial test work already producing a >53% grade copper DSO product.
“We are also excited to drill test a number of newly identified EM conductors. We are seeing extensive chalcocite outcrop at surface, with coincident geophysical anomalies that are consistent with copper sulphides. These are compelling targets for a new discovery.
“The start-up of the program has gone smoothly with favourable weather conditions. We look forward to reporting on the results as drilling progresses.”
The resource definition programme is initially focusing on defining potential shallow resources within the 2750N Zone.The first drill hole – ST22-01 – is now underway.
Historical drilling within the 2750N Zone has encountered thick intervals of high-grade copper mineralisation, including 110m at 2.45% Cu from surface (drill hole ST97-08), and 56.3m @ 3.07% Cu from 12.2m (drill hole ST99-19).
Given the outstanding width of these intervals and the distance between drill holes (>100m), extension and infill drilling in the 2750N Zone gives the potential opportunity to quickly define large volumes of further copper mineralisation.
Drilling is also planned at the 4100N and 2200N Zones. A total of 15-20 drill holes are initially planned in this programme, with hole depths between 100-160m due to the shallow nature of mineralisation.
Initial ore sorting test work on copper mineralisation at Storm supported the production of a DSO product grading 53% Cu . The excellent results from the ore-sorting and DSO test work suggest that a shallow, high-grade resource is likely to be well suited to a low-footprint DSO mining operation. Further samples of ore will be collected during the current field program to undertake a second phase of beneficiation test work.
Targets
The drilling will also test a number of high-priority electromagnetic (EM) conductors that were identified by the 2021 fixed loop electromagnetic (FLEM) survey completed by American West over the Storm Project area.
The survey identified multiple near surface anomalies, some of which are coincident with outcropping copper occurrences. Significantly, the new conductors are consistent with the EM responses of known massive chalcocite mineralisation on the Storm property.
With only very limited drilling into some of these areas of anomalism, the newly defined conductors present a number of compelling new and untested drill targets that will be drilled during this drilling programme.
For further information please visit: https://www.americanwestmetals.com/
