While sifting through all the posts and whether people are selling/holding, I havent seen much commentary on the implications this announcement has on the size of the deposit, or the implications for future drilling
Hidden away in the announcement was a line saying that RC drilling has commenced to test other C soil anomalies. This in itself could be a catalyst for a re-rating if more visible copper sulphides are returned from new prospects.
The near-term focus of defining a resource has led the company to drill a 50 x 50m pattern within a 200m x 150m area. This area lies within the announced "800m x 300-350m" box that they intend to define a resource around. Why did they not extend diamond drilling to cover the larger area? Assays from 16R - 18R were underwhelming and probably didn't justify it. Also, 21R - 23R lie outside of that box (with no planned follow up drilling), indicating also that these result may disappoint also. Just my opinion though.
Plugging in the new intersections, I calculate an average thickness of the mineralised sequence as 55m (diluted) that contains an average of 28m of mineralisation (average of 11 assayed drillholes - 11R - 18R, 1D - 3D plus visuals from 7D and 8D. No adjustments made for true widths, drilling angles, etc.). Within the 28m of mineralisation, the average grade is 1.57% Cu. Therefore, if it comes to a crude calculation of tonnage using a density of 2.8, dimensions of 800m x 350m x 28m, we get a tonnage of around 22Mt (@1.57%Cu).
If we include all the unreported material between the mineralization (i.e. take the total package of 55m average thickness) then we get 43Mt. If we assign a value of 0.1% Cu to unreported material (dilution) then the overall grade of the mineralization sequence drops to 0.85%.
Either way, it doesn't really affect the overall Cu content, which lies around 350,000 tonnes of metal.
Of course the average mineralized thickness of 28m is strongly skewed by the drilling on cross-section 1, as intercepts outside that cross-section are very underwhelming to date.
The intersection of the mineralized sequence in 7D is a very important milestone. It has extended the mineralization to a down-dip extent of 500m, all of which lies within 300m 0f surface. The thicknesses look narrower, but still are shown as around 20-30m in the announcement. If we can mainatain grade at around 1.5% Cu at this depth, its potentially mineable (even though it would have a high strip-ratio).
I would prefer the company not to try to rush out a resource, and systematically find the outer extents of the system using a 100m x 100m diamond grid (instead of 50m x 50m). This would likely still make it into inferred status, and would almost certainly return a higher tonnage resource (defined to 500m down-dip instead of 300m). Also, it would give a more realistic grade estimate that reflects the whole deposit (rather than just a small 200m x 150m area).
In summary:
1) Look out for the scout RC drilling which could be a strong catalyst for share price growth.
2) Prepare for potentially more underwhelming assays from 21R - 23R (again, just my opinion).
3) The deposit is still BIG (and probably will get bigger) and will probably have great metallurgy.
Remember, a copper miner producing 50,000t of copper per annum is the equivalent of a 200,000 oz per annum gold producer (using USD at todays prices, comparison made on revenue).
DYOR.
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