White Cliff Minerals has contracted Expert Geophysics to complete an airborne geophysical survey over its entire Coppermine project in the Canadian province of Nunavut as soon as next quarter.
The campaign is expected to highlight and define structural trends to optimise future drill targets and will incorporate Expert Geophysics’ mobile magnetotellurics (MMT) system to image the subsurface resistivity for both volcanic and sedimentary-hosted copper deposits.
Geoscience Australia defines magnetotellurics survey as a passive geophysical method that uses natural time variations of the Earth’s magnetic and electric fields to measure the electrical resistivity of the sub-surface. The system uses advanced noise processing techniques at both electronic and signal processing levels, ensuring high data quality, even in low natural electromagnetic field conditions.
Management says the survey technique represents the latest generation of airborne audio frequency magnetotellurics technologies, leveraging advancements in electronics, airborne system design and sophisticated signal processing techniques.
White Cliff is now fully permitted to follow up where historical exploration previously identified dozens of outcropping occurrences of copper and silver mineralisation across its searching 805-square-kilometre project. It includes one rock chip sample from the Halo prospect returning assays of 30.24 per cent copper and 34 grams per tonne silver, while a second showed 30.25 per cent copper and 43g/t silver.
Rock chip samples from the Cu-Tar prospect delivered even higher results, with one assay returning 35.54 per cent copper and 17g/t silver. The company’s Don target has returned multiple samples of greater than 40 per cent copper, with another showing 30.7 per cent copper and more than 200g/t silver. Two additional samples from the Don prospect showed assays of greater than 40 per cent copper, with sliver values exceeding 100g/t.
White Cliff Minerals chairman Roderick McIllree said: “The deployment of MobileMT, known for capturing subsurface resistivity with its three-component sensor design, aligns with our commitment to unlocking the vast prospectivity of Coppermine. Now that we have started this major field program, we are optimistic about discovering copper resources and contributing significantly to the geological understanding of this region.”
The company will initially base its logistical hub in Kugluktuk, a town of about 1500 people that is located to the north-east of the project area, which is accessible by both plane and ship.
Once White Cliff has finalised its exploration campaigns for Coppermine, the programs are expected to run in close collaboration with planned work at its recently-acquired Radium Point uranium project in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The project adds a massive 3300sq km to its Canadian holdings in an area that takes in several historical mining operations.
In November last year, the company secured a swathe of ground in the Canadian province of Nunavut after an agreement with a private party for 61 mineral claims covering 80,500 hectares at Coppermine River. Management says the Coppermine area hosts a raft of high-grade copper lodes that sit along the same structural trend, primarily consisting of native copper, chalcocite, bornite and chalcopyrite.
Using existing high-resolution magnetics, in addition to extensive rock chip, trench and drill results, White Cliff says outcropping structure and mineralisation can be traced through more than a whopping 100km of strike length.
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By Michael Philipps
