Valor preps drilling campaign at ultra-high grade Surprise Creek uranium target

The size of the uranium-copper prize at Valor Resources’ Surprise Creek project is now 500m long and counting, with several new surface sampling assay results topping out at 7.98% U₃O₈.

Surprise Creek is one of four Valor Resources (ASX:VAL) projects in Canada’s famed Athabasca Basin, known as the world’s highest grade uranium province.

The average grade across the Basin is ~2% U₃O₈, which is 10-20 times the global average.

It hosts 10 of the world’s top 15 highest grade uranium deposits including Cameco’s McArthur River and Cigar Lake mines, as well as recent world-class discoveries like NexGen Energy’s Arrow deposit and Fission Uranium Corp’s Tripe R deposit.

And yet despite its significant uranium endowment, Athabasca is still relatively under-explored, particularly in the past 40 years.

Basement hosted mineralisation targets – exactly what VAL is hunting for at Surprise Creek — were previously overlooked.

Drill target confirmed at Surprise Creek

In July, reconnaissance work at Surprise Creek returned several rock chips with assays >1% U3O8 and up to 6.13% U₃O₈ and 1.03% Cu.

Follow-up fieldwork has now returned six surface samples above 1% U3O8 with associated copper, including:

7.98% U₃O₈ and 0.67% Cu
6.83% U₃O₈ and 0.17% Cu
3.35% U₃O₈ and 0.04% Cu

The mineralised target area is now 500m long and counting.

Importantly, this mineralisation displays strong geological similarities with significant uranium deposits in the surrounding Beaverlodge Uranium District such as Fay-Ace and Gunnar, VAL says.

Drill testing of the Surprise Creek target is planned for 2023, plus airborne radiometrics and magnetics across the entire project area.

Mineralisation extent confirmed

VAL exec chair George Bauk says these latest results confirm the extent of significant surface uranium mineralisation at Surprise Creek and provide further confidence in the drill target.

“The known deposits in this part of the Beaverlodge district produced about 57 million pounds of uranium historically, highlighting the potential of this area to yield very significant uranium deposits,” he says.

“Prior to drilling, we plan to complete detailed airborne radiometrics and magnetics across the entire Surprise Creek Project area to identify other potential uranium targets as well as enhance our structural geological understanding to assist with drill planning.

“We have also recently expanded our landholding to the west which covers a large area of widespread historical copper occurrences which have attracted minimal exploration in the last 40 years.”

A bonus copper leg

Follow-up of the copper occurrences identified in the July field program was also carried out as part of the latest field program.

A further 17 samples were collected in this area targeting the copper occurrences.

Of the 17 samples, seven returned assays of >1,000ppm Cu and up to 1.07% Cu. Four separate areas of copper mineralisation have now been identified by the field programs.

“We plan to follow-up the known copper occurrences on-ground in 2023 once we have completed a detailed historical data compilation and review,” Bauk says.

This article was developed in collaboration with Valor Resources, 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.