White Cliff Minerals (ASX: WCN) has finalised its 2014 exploration program to test the potential depth and strike extent of the new copper and gold discovery at its Chanach project in Kyrgyz Republic.
Drilling will test along strike from, and beneath of the 2013 high grade trenching results White Cliff encountered in 2013 including: 7 metres at 3.83% copper and 30.1 g/t gold and 10 metres at 1.73% copper.
This also included a very interesting 9 metres at 6.03 g/t gold result.
Now the drill program will consist of 3,000 metres to 5,000 metres of reverse circulation drilling and 2,000 metres of trench channel sampling.
Chanach covers 83 square kilometres in the western part of the Tien Shan Belt, a highly mineralised zone that extends for over 2,500 kilometres from western Uzbekistan, through Tajikistan, Kyrgyz Republic and southern Kazakhstan to western China.
Mineralisation occurs as porphyry and epithermal systems developed within magmatic arcs, and orogenic type gold deposits that are structurally controlled.
Major deposits located within 100 kilometres of Chanach contain up to 93 million ounces of gold and 25 million tonnes of copper - so regionally there are significant discoveries.
Initial work indicates that the project hosts porphyry and skarn style copper and gold mineralisation.
Drilling has identified several areas containing up to 2.1% copper and 1-2 g/t gold while rock sampling has identified up to 5% copper and 40 g/t gold within a large mineralised area.
So there is significant promise for the project to host multiple large scale copper-gold resources given 2013 results.
The 2014 program will build on this work, testing the potential for a high grade copper-gold deposit, extending from surface at Chanach.
Exploration will begin in April with first trenching results expected in early May so it should be a strong upcoming news cycle from White Cliff.
So drilling is slated to commence in July in a fascinating high grade copper gold play. Which is all strong fodder and upside for White Cliff given it is capped at just circa $2.4 million.
Proactive Investors Australia is the market leader in producing news, articles and research reports on ASX “Small and Mid-cap” stocks with distribution in Australia, UK, North America and Hong Kong / China.