Ahead of an inaugural drill campaign Askari Metals has extended its copper mineralised footprint and defined extensive gold mineralisation after sifting through soils at the company’s Horry copper and gold project in WA’s Kimberley region.
The recent soil sampling work picked up results of up to 655 parts per billion gold and up to 152 parts per million copper.
The program was designed to investigate and determine the strike extent of gold and copper mineralisation around the project’s Mt Dockrell and Western Lead prospects where the company recently completed gold loaming and stream sediment work.
The gold soil anomaly was found to correlate well with the results from Askari’s recent gold loaming that returned up to 31.9 grams per tonne gold across the project.
The distribution of gold also appears to align with the project’s structural features revealed by Askari’s magnetic survey conducted in June.
Similarly, the company identified strong copper anomalism in the same areas at Mt Dockrell and Western Lead with additional elevated levels picked up to the south-west around the project’s Leo prospect.
The coincidence between the identified copper and gold soil anomalies is reflected in Askari’s recent rock sampling work at the project that returned one sample with grades of 3.82 g/t gold and 2.03 per cent copper.
The copper results also align with the structural orientation of the area leading Askari to believe it may have a broader structurally controlled mineralisation system on its hands.
The system will be central to Askari’s upcoming inaugural work with the drill bit.
Askari Metals Vice President of Geology and Exploration, Johan Lambrechts said: “We are pleased with the positive nature of these results and believe they support the increasing confidence the Company has in the Horry project. The increased footprint of the copper mineralisation is of particular interest, particularly as we lead up to the inaugural drill campaign scheduled to commence next week.”
The main target area for the drill program will be the project’s Horry Horse prospect to the south where the explorer has previously raked in high calibre rock chips going up to 8.5 per cent copper and 0.71 g/t gold.
Previously the mineralised trend at Horry Horse was defined across a length of more than 400m, however in August a 4.3 per cent copper-rock chip sample was collected to the south-west of the prospect, potentially extending the trend for another 480m.
In addition to drill testing the surface copper anomaly at Horry Horse the company will test beneath areas of anomalous gold identified by the latest soil campaign.
The project is located within the Halls Creek Mobile Belt, a structure prospective for a range of commodities including gold, copper, silver, nickel, lead, zinc and diamonds.
Just 50km to the north-east of Askari and within the Belt is ASX-listed Cazaly Resources’ Halls Creek copper project that comes packed with a resource of 1.72 million tonnes at 1.4 per cent copper, 12 g/t silver and 1.4 per cent zinc.
Past exploration at the nearby project has yielded a strong calibre of intercepts including 57m going a solid 5.04 per cent copper in one hole and 117m running 0.32 per cent copper in a different hole.
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By Matt Birney
