American West’s Storm Copper Project is whipping up a frenzy with bonanza hits from a its latest drill program. Pic via Getty Images.
Lightning strikes at American West’s Storm with spectacular copper hit of 41m at 4.18%
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American West Metals has unloaded a set of bonanza copper hits from its diamond drilling program at its Storm Copper Project in Canada, hitting a headlining 41m at 4.18% copper.
The first assays from the campaign into the 200m long 2750N Zone at Storm, located on Somerset Island in Canada’s northern Nunuvut territory, have dazzled with that thick, high grade strike in ST22-05 coming from just 38m downhole.
It contains intervals with even higher copper grades, including 15m at 10.05% Cu from 47m downhole, and which includes 5m at 24.28% Cu from 48m in a thick zone of massive bornite and chalcopyrite.
It follows a rich vein of form at 2750N, which is looking to advance to a maiden resource with every drill hole completed to date intersecting thick zones of breccia and or massive copper sulphides, the kind of mineralisation that tends to host high grade copper deposits.
Of 1534m drilled during American West’s (ASX:AW1) 2022 program 997m has been completed at the shallow, high grade 2750N Zone.
The mineralisation at the 2750N Zone is over 200m in strike and remains open to the east, west and at depth, with strong copper anomalism in soils and rock chips for over 1km from the defined mineralised zone suggesting there is strong potential for further extensions.
Gossan rock chips on the western margin of the 2750N Zone include a float of up to 62% copper.
More results in days
Further assays at Storm are pending and are expected in the coming days.
AW1 will hope they match up to today’s stellar hit, which validates historical high-grade intersections from what is emerging as a major copper discovery, with the $22 million company’s shares soaring almost 90% on the open yesterday.
“Assays for drill hole ST22-05 –the first assays to be received for drilling in the current program –have returned spectacular copper grades over very significant thicknesses,” AW1 managing director Dave O’Neill said.
“These results immediately validate the historical high-grade intersections within the 2750N Zone, and highlight the quality of the Storm mineral system.
“These kinds of grades and thicknesses are exactly what we want to see as we work to define a shallow high-grade copper resource.
“The 2750N Zone is currently over 200m long and still open along strike and at depth, with excellent potential for further drilling to significantly expand the high-grade mineralisation.
“Further results for this year’s drilling are imminent and we look forward to reporting these soon.”
DSO potential
More diamond drilling is planned to expand the 2750N Zone and to define initial resources at the 4100N and 2200N Zones where high-grade copper was also intersected in historical drilling.
Meanwhile exploration activities including drilling and geophysics are also planned to follow up the significant new discovery of sediment hosted copper mineralisation associated with a large EM anomaly to the west of the 4100N Zone.
Beneficiation and met test work will also start soon on drill core from this year’s program, aiming to create a definitive flow sheet for a direct shipping ore operation from the 2750N Zone.
Previous test work on Storm core has produced a more than 53% copper DSO product using only a full scale ore sorter.
That is significant, because it means Storm ore could be produced and sold at very low capital and processing costs, accelerating a path to production.
Only a handful of copper mines contain ore high enough in grade to be delivered in a DSO product, including the early days of mid-tier miner Sandfire Resources’ DeGrussa mine in WA.
This article was developed in collaboration with American West Metals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
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