QGX drills Chuluut

A newly discovered breccia pipe has become the target of a drilling program by QGX (QGX-V).

Dubbed Chuluut, the pipe was discovered during a summer reconnaissance mapping program and has since returned upwards of 1.75% copper, 0.11 gram gold and 220 grams silver per tonne in chip sampling. Further, coincident chargeablity and magnetic highs suggest that mineralization is more widespread than outcroppings would suggest.

At surface, the pipe measures 50-by-30 metres, though quartz-vein floats are found as far as 1 km to the west. An alteration zone characterized by sericite and ilmenite is associated with the pipe proper and has been mapped over a length of 250 metres.

Six chip samples taken from two pits averaged 0.53-1.75% copper and 0.02-0.11 gram gold; four also carried 51-220 grams silver. Copper values from the altered granitic host varied from 12-941 parts per million (ppm) copper versus 7-141 pmm in unaltered granite.

The Copper minerals appear in the form of malachite, azurite and copper wad (hydrated oxide of maganese and copper), reflecting post-mineralizing oxidation. They and ilmenite occur in vugs and fractures in the pipe’s quartz-rich matrix.

QBX also has outlined a second chargeability anomaly some 2.5 km to the southwest, while a third has been highlighted 3 km north of the larger but similar Erdene Tolgoi prospect. That prospect, which was discovered in late 2002, when the property was staked, sits 5.5 km to the southeast of Chuluut and has returnded upwards of 5.25% copper and 2.64 grams gold.

Based on the preliminary work, QGX believes the Erdene Tolgoi property underlies a faulted offset of the copper-gold belt that hosts the massive Turquiose Hill deposits of Ivanhoe Mines (IVN-T). Recent drilling in the largest of that bunch, Hugo Dommett, extended its high-grade core by 350 metres, pulling up was much as 224 metres of mineralization grading 2.9% copper and 1.13 grams gold.