West Cobar Metals Ltd (ASX:WC1) is looking to expand the footprint of its Cobar West copper project in New South Wales after lodging two new exploration licence applications in the highly prospective Cobar district.
The company has applied for ELA7009, known as the Lilyvale Project, and ELA7010, the Nullagoola Project, together covering about 573km2 of underexplored ground between the Bulla Park copper-antimony-silver deposit and the operating CSA and Peak mines.
Cobar District showing West Cobar Metals’ granted tenements and new tenement applications ELA7009 and ELA7010, the Bulla Park deposit and other significant deposits in the Cobar region.
The addition will lift West Cobar’s granted and applied exploration tenure to about 1,090km2 and extend its coverage to about 120 kilometres of strike along favourable Winduck Group stratigraphy, which hosts the Bulla Park deposit.
The new applications were selected after reviewing the geology, geochemistry and geophysics associated with Bulla Park, where exploration has pointed to large mineralised systems in the upper Winduck Group sediments linked to gravity highs.
Managing director Matt Szwedzicki said the new ground built on lessons from Bulla Park and opened a broader opportunity to grow the company’s resource base in the district.
“These new licence applications, over ground highly prospective for copper, antimony, silver and gold, build on what we have learnt at Bulla Park and give our company a major new opportunity to discover and develop new resources in the Cobar District.
The historical geochemistry results and publicly available geophysical surveys from the Blind Freddie prospect already indicate potential for significant copper and gold mineralisation within the licence application area of ELA7010. Gravity highs, along strike from WC1’s Bulla Park copper – antimony – silver deposit on the new licences applied for, indicate potential for further major mineralised systems.”
New ground adds multiple exploration targets
At Nullagoola, historical soil and rock chip sampling at the Blind Freddie prospect has outlined a zone of copper, lead and gold anomalism stretching more than 3km. West Cobar said the anomaly sits along the eastern margin of a gravity high associated with a major structure interpreted from aeromagnetic data.
At Lilyvale, several strong gravity anomalies are interpreted to lie within upper Winduck Group stratigraphy at a similar position to Bulla Park. Historical exploration identified anomalous copper and lead in rock chips as well as anomalous gold in stream sediment samples.
The company plans to move quickly once the tenements are granted, with ground gravity surveys, geological mapping and geochemical sampling designed to refine targets for drilling across the expanded Cobar West project area.