Vancouver Several new copper-gold targets have been identified by Imperial Metals (III-T) at the producing Mount Polley mine near Williams Lake, B.C. The most significant of these, dubbed the Wagon Wheel area, hosts an indicated resource of 408,302 tonnes grading 0.46% copper and 0.59 gram gold.
Imperial re-opened its wholly owned, 20,000-tonne-per-day capacity mine earlier this year. The company commissioned the mine in 1997, but suspended operations in 2001 because of weak metal prices. Subsequent exploration led to the discovery of the high-grade Northeast zone, now being mined along with other open-pit deposits. Production next year is estimated at about 60 million lbs. of copper and 50,000 oz. gold.
Recent surface and near-surface exploration (including mapping, prospecting, till sampling and percussion drilling) outlined several new targets and defined previously identified prospects.
The Wagon Wheel area is a prime target for ongoing exploration as it’s situated less than 300 metres from the crusher. The open-pittable resource is based on a shallow, 30-metre percussion drill program in the Wagon Wheel trench area, combined with previous drilling. The best result from recent percussion drilling was 0.97% copper and 0.66 gram gold over 20.8 metres.
More drilling is needed at Wagon Wheel to complete engineering work, and to test extensions to the south, north and at depth.
Known deposits and zones at Mount Polley are hosted in an alkalic intrusive complex within the Quesnel Trough. The new exploration targets defined during the summer program include the Tall Fir zone, where the best result from trenching and near-surface percussion drilling was 0.54% copper and 0.33 gram gold over 13.7 metres.
Mineralization was intersected at the Ace zone for more than a 150-metre strike length of percussion drilling. The best result was 0.12% copper and 0.32 gram gold over 13.8 metres.
The Skid zone has only been tested by limited work to date. Some samples returned more than 1% copper. The only percussion hole drilled here returned 0.3% copper and 0.14 gram gold over 9.8 metres. No drilling has tested the Knob East, Zone 9, or the Wayne prospect. No new drilling has tested a number of historic targets, including Junction, 71 zone, and the Boundary zone.
Drilling to test the newly defined and previously defined targets is planned for early next year.
Imperial also owns 50% of the Huckleberry copper-molybdenum mine near Houston, B.C., and a former gold producer in Nevada.
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