Eagle Mountain is excited for Oracle Ridge’s upcoming mineral resource update after receiving better grades from channel sampling and drilling at the site. Pic via Getty Images.
Mining
Eagle Mountain is confident of boosting both the size and quality of the historical 16.5Mt Oracle Ridge copper project after channel sampling “again shows better than average grades”.
Channel sampling along four underground channels on the 6500 level in the North-West mine area at Oracle Ridge has returned thick and high grade copper, supporting increases to both the resource size and quality of Eagle Mountain Mining’s (ASX:EM2) upcoming MRE, due in Q4 this year.
Highlights include 32.6m at 2.23% Cu, 26.13g/t Ag and 0.28g/t Au, including a 1.6m chunk at 9.47% Cu, 100g/t Ag and 1.01g/t Au.
Adding to this, thicker than anticipated mineralised zones were intersected within five underground drill holes located in the North-West mine area.
Mineralised skarn-altered limestone was encountered in all drill holes, and highlights include 11.4m @ 2.29% Cu, 16.45g/t Ag and 0.14g/t Au from hole WTU-23-06 within 105.2m @ 0.85% Cu, 9.01g/t Ag and 0.10g/t Au.
Hole WTU-23-05 showed 4.4m @ 2.23% Cu, 23.41g/t Ag and 0.39g/t Au within 41.8m @ 0.54% Cu, 5.40g/t Ag and 0.09g/t Au.
Further upside to the resource is expected in a region north-east of recent underground drilling, where a surface drill hole returned 7.7m @ 0.60% Cu, 11.30g/t Ag and 0.06g/t Au containing 0.7m @ 3.39% Cu, 66.30g/t Ag and 0.43g/t Au at hole WT-23-188.
Oracle Ridge, near Tucson, Arizona currently has an MRE of 16.5Mt @t 1.45% Cu, 15.1g/t Ag and 0.19g/t Au for 240,000t contained copper, 8Moz of contained silver and 102,000oz of contained gold. EM2 is confident this ongoing exploration will prove up a significant increase.
CEO Tim Mason says this new MRE will form a key input component for the various technical evaluations that the company is currently advancing as it looks at opportunities such as bulk mining or a selective high-grade mining scenario.
“We are delighted to see further resource upside from our second set of underground channel sampling results at Oracle Ridge,” Mason said.
“The channels have returned high-grade mineralisation, which we believe has the potential to further increase the grade of the higher-grade portions of the resource.
“We are looking forward to incorporating these results into our next resource update, which we expect to release in Q4 2023.
“The inclusion of these channels, in addition to positive results from our surface expansion and underground upgrade drilling, will provide us with an improved resource model to underpin a range of mining and processing options as part of ongoing technical evaluations.
“These results provide support for further channel sampling to test the upside potential in other areas of the extensive underground mine workings.”
This article was developed in collaboration with Eagle Mountain Mining, 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.
Mining
Mining
Mining
Get the latest Stockhead news delivered free to your inbox.
