West Cobar starts hunt for copper elephants in NSW

West Cobar has kicked off diamond drilling at its flagship Bulla Park project in central New South Wales less than two weeks after listing on the ASX.

The drill program is intended to prove that the underexplored area west of the Cobar copper mine could mirror – at least to some degree – the copper prospectivity found in the eastern half of the region.

West Cobar Mines (ASX:WC1) already has the advantage of knowing that copper is present within its Bulla Park project with a previous hole 19CA002 returning a 135m intersection grading 0.24% copper that includes a 33m zone at 0.45% copper in the prospect of the same name.

This has been interpreted as probably representing the periphery of a major copper-silver stratabound mineralised system, which is why the company’s first three holes will target extensions to this thick copper-silver hit.

Once these holes are completed, the rig will move to drill a single hole at the Mountain prospect, which is a lookalike of the Bulla Park prospect.

Drilling is then expected to shift to the Mount Jack Project to the northwest of Bulla Park before the end of the year, where a single diamond hole will test an aeromagnetic “bullseye” target in close proximity to a series of strong intersecting regional structures.

Chief executive officer David Pascoe said the drill program to test the Bulla Park, Mountain and Mount Jack prospects is the result of many months of planning.

Bulla Park

Pascoe acquired the ground making up the Bulla Park project after reviewing data collated from shallow rotary air blast holes drilled by BHP in the 1970s which detected anomalous lead in an area around 4km by 1km.

Following work by a number of partners, the company developed a new interpretation theorising that stratabound copper mineralisation beneath geological cover increases in grade and width.

West Cobar is confident about its chances, with Pascoe telling Stockhead earlier this month that it was looking for a giant Winu-style deposit rather than a lookalike of the already sizeable Cobar deposit.

This article was developed in collaboration with West Cobar 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.