Southern Arc goes deep in Indonesia

VANCOUVER — The deep reach of Southern Arc Minerals’ (SA-V, SOACF-O) drills has paid off with the company’s longest mineralized intercept to date at its 21-sq.-km Selodong prospect on west Lombok Island, in Indonesia.

Starting from surface and continuing to a depth of 855 metres, hole 23 cut 0.1% copper and 0.22 gram gold per tonne. The hole was testing the northern extension of the Montong Botek target where Southern Arc says Newmont Mining (NMC-T, NEM-N) had previously outlined a 450-metre-long, 250-metre-wide mineralized area.

Polymictic breccias ran to 592 metres depth, followed by both altered volcanic and volcanic-derived sediments.

A hole sniffing out the potential of southwest extensions of a mineralized area encountered in hole 4 at Blongas II, about 500 metres north of Montong, came up empty. In hole 4, Southern Arc had intercepted 407 metres grading 0.25% copper and 0.45 gram gold per tonne.

Southern Arc also reported a drill result from its Lepangan Geres property, about 7.5 km northwest of Selodong. Hole 21 returned 142 metres grading 0.07% copper and 0.14 gram gold starting from surface.

The company says the first 192 metres were mainly intensely sheared, phyllic altered diorite porphyry followed by sheared volcanics and volcanic sediments.

Although the west Lombok property is Southern Arc’s current focus, it has five properties on Lombok and Sumbawa islands. The company says the acquisitions are all part of its strategy to explore copper-gold porphyry targets in the Sunda-Banda magmatic arc, which spans across Indonesia’s southern islands.