Cooper Metals Ltd (ASX:CPM) has extended its landholding at the Mt Isa East Copper Gold Project in north-western Queensland with the granting of tenement EPM28087, known as Barbara East, of which it acquired 85% ownership from Revolution Mining Pty Ltd.
Barbara East, just two kilometres to the northeast of Cooper’s existing tenure and totalling about 192 square kilometres, takes the company’s granted tenure at Mt Isa to just over 1,600 square kilometres.
Significantly, the tenement covers part of the Mary Kathleen Domain, which hosts the highly prospective Barbara Deposit, with a resource of 4.7 million tonnes at 1.6% copper and 0.15 g/t gold.
Mt Isa East project location, including new acquisition tenement over regional geology and main prospects.
Limited exploration
Previous exploration has been limited to regional geophysics and surface geochemical sampling, including stream sediment sampling and minor rock chip sampling recorded within the government’s database.
An external review of EPM28087 highlights three priority areas for copper-gold exploration, including two historical versatile time-domain electromagnetic (VTEM) anomalies that may indicate bedrock conductors with copper-gold potential.
Cooper will conduct fieldwork to follow-up on priority areas on the new tenement later this year.
Wide open potential
Cooper managing director Ian Warland said: “Cooper has already identified several historical workings and conceptual targets for follow-up, most of which have no prior drilling, leaving the discovery potential wide open.
“The identification of two regional VTEM anomalies in prospective Corella Formation rocks, that elsewhere in the region host several copper-gold deposits is an exciting development and worthy of ground truthing.
“The Barbara deposit is thought to have a VTEM signature demonstrating the usefulness of the method in identifying sulphide rich copper mineralisation. I look forward to updating the market with our exploration progress over the coming weeks.”
Separately, Cooper’s geology team is currently in the field exploring the Ardmore tenement to the north of Mt Hope.