Drilling by American West Metals (ASX:AW1) has unearthed a new copper discovery and returned high grades of up to 13.5% at the Storm Project in Canada.
The company, which has a market capitalisation of $64.8 million, has completed 20,000m of drilling across 128 reverse circulation holes and 14 diamond holes at Storm and Tempest.
The latest results have confirmed a new copper discovery, known as Squall, which Managing Director Dave O’Neill says is the second new discovery of near-surface copper mineralisation in the Southern Graben Area of the Storm Project this year.
Drilling of an anomaly identified by moving loop electromagnetics (MLEM) in an untested area of the Thunder Prospect has intersected “strong” visual copper sulphides from about 181.4m downhole.
The latest results also show the potential for the resource within the Cyclone Deposit to be upgraded with a top hit of 1.5m @ 13.5% copper and 23 grams per tonne (g/t) silver from 54.9m.
Another hole intersected 3.1m @ 3.9% copper and 10.5g/t silver from 57.9m, including 1.5m @ 5.9% copper and 16g/t silver.
Mineralisation was also intersected outside of the existing resource with results showing 27.4m @ 1.1% copper and 3.5g/t silver from 96m, including 4.6m @ 3.1% copper and 7.7g/t silver from 109.7m.
A deep-searching 400m loop MLEM survey is currently underway at the Tornado and Blizzard areas, where American Metals has identified two electromagnetic (EM) anomalies coincident with outcropping copper.
Previous drilling at Storm has confirmed the strong correlation between EM targets and high-grade copper sulphides.
“The MLEM surveys are progressing in parallel with the exploration drilling, and preliminary results from Tornado have already highlighted two conductive features of interest,” O’Neill says.
“Further exploration work, including drilling, is now underway to test these and other highly prospective copper targets.”
Drilling of a 1,300m by 500m EM anomaly south and below the Cirrus Deposit is also in progress, with the diamond hole planned to a depth of 600m.
The Storm Project, which is located on Somerset Island in Nunavut, hosts a maiden resource of 17.5 million tonnes @ 1.2% copper and 3.4g/t silver for 205,000 tonnes of copper and 1.9 million ounces of silver.
The shallow copper mineralisation within the Storm deposits is open in all directions. The project spans 2,200 km2 within the Polaris mineral district, and sits about 120km south of Resolute Bay, the regional community and logistics hub.
American West has an 80% stake in the project, with the remaining interest owned by Aston Bay (TSX:BAY).
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: American West
