Silver City Minerals Ltd (ASX:SCI) has identified further strong copper sulphide mineralisation at the Copper Blow project and plans to begin phase II drilling as soon as possible.
The company has completed four diamond drill holes in its phase I program at the project, 20 kilometres from the mining centre of Broken Hill in far west New South Wales.
Strong copper sulphide mineralisation has been identified in magnetite-sulphide veins and banded magnetite-bearing shear zones in all holes.
Infill and step-out drilling proposed
On the basis of observations of core and existing results the company has preliminary plans for infill and step-out drilling northeast and southwest of the Central Fault.
Planning and design of the phase II holes will be contingent on assay results from phase I.
READ: Silver City Minerals identifies copper sulphide near Broken Hill
A completed hole northeast of Central Fault indicates a significant increase in sulphide content to between 1 and 10% from 180 to 230 metres with the dominant sulphide being chalcopyrite.
Silver City considers this to be a significant mineralised copper sulphide intersection.
Geological interpretation suggests a steeply dipping, well mineralised shear zone circa 50 metres in true thickness.
The shear zone hosts continuous copper mineralisation from surface to at least 200 metres below surface and is open a depth.
Potential for open pit mining
The width and vertical extent of copper mineralisation is highly encouraging and suggests potential for exploitation using open pit mining methods.
Little drilling has been undertaken to the northeast or southwest of this intersection.
Another hole was drilled with a diamond tail to extend a previous reverse circulation hole to 332.7 metres.
Between 288.4 and 299.5 metres it intersected a quartz-magnetite-sulphide vein hosting predominantly iron sulphides and localised, very coarse grained copper sulphides.
Scope for extensions
There is significant scope for extensions of this copper-bearing vein above, below and along strike from this section.
The last two holes of the program are being logged and sampled with laboratory analytical results for the first two holes pending.
Other zones identified for testing
Silver City also completed detailed ground geophysical surveys at Copper Blow late in 2017.
These show that, in addition to the North and South zones, there are seven pod-like zones of coincident magnetic and gravity anomalies along a 4.5 kilometre prospective magnetic shear.
The phase II program will systematically test these zones, initially with reverse circulation drilling.