International copper development company Marengo Mining (TSX: MRN, ASX, POMSoX: MGO) has reported that diamond drilling at its 100%-owned Yandera Copper-Molybdenum-Gold Project in Papua New Guinea has confirmed significant extensions to the large porphyry copper systems at depth.
The company said excellent assay results have been received from the first 984m vertical diamond drill hole, YD273, at the Imbruminda zone, the north-western zone within the Yandera Central Porphyry system.
A second drill hole, YD294, is currently in progress at the Gremi zone, immediately south-east of Imbruminda, and has intersected sections of copper mineralisation below the current resource.
Drilling at the Imbruminda zone intersected 981m @ 0.23% Cu and 152ppm Mo including 207m @ 0.51% Cu and 118ppm Mo (0.63% CuEq).
The hole finished in a high-grade zone of 29.7m @ 0.49% Cu and 699ppm Mo (1.19% CuEq). Mineralisation extends at least 500m below current resource boundary and remains open at depth.
Les Emery, managing director, said these are very significant results for the Yandera Project and for Marengo. The deep drilling program has been successful in confirming that this large-scale porphyry system extends for considerable depths, at least to 1km."
This gives us confidence in the potential to increase the resource inventory at Yandera, which would elevate the Project in its rankings as one of the more significant copper and molybdenum deposits within the Asia-Pacific region."
We are looking forward to continued results from the deep drilling program and to an updated JORC compliant resource estimate, which will be fed into the DFS due at the end of this year.
Two further deep holes planned at Imbruminda and Gremi. Marengo expects the current deep diamond drilling program to enable some of this material to be included in the companys JORC compliant copper-molybdenum resource inventory which will form the basis for the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) on the Yandera Project due for completion at the end of this year.
The Yandera DFS, which is scheduled for completion by December 2010, is based on an open pit mining operation, initially processing at 25Mtpa with the potential to increase to a long-term rate of 50Mtpa.
MGO Price at posting:
10.5¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
