Bastion Minerals (ASX:BMO) has begun studies to understand the open pit potential of the existing deposit and other targets along strike and nearby its ICE Copper Project in the Yukon Province, Western Canada.
ICE is a Cyprus-style volcanic hosted massive sulphide deposit, containing copper-gold, with a historical foreign non-JORC resource of 4.56 million tonnes @ 1.48% copper in the Yukon Territory.
In 1998, a preliminary open pit was designed for the deposit based on the copper value of the project.
Bastion Minerals says the pit did not extend to the details of haul road location and benches, and is not considered to have been optimised.
Executive Chairman Ross Landles says the project is considered “very attractive” for high-grade mineralisation at or near surface.
“The highly prospective high-grade ICE Copper Project has the potential to be a game-changer for Bastion and we are extremely happy to have added this project to our portfolio,” Landles says.
“The historic, foreign (non-JORC) resource of 4.56 million tonnes @ 1.48% copper, contains 3.4 million tonnes @ 1.48% copper that was considered to be extractable via open pit and we believe there is potential for open pit mining of more of the deposit, given the shallow nature of mineralisation.
“Interestingly, the historical resource was estimated without including any value for gold, which may add extra value.
“We will be evaluating the open pit potential further, with review of the historical simple open pit and how this can be upgraded for likely future conditions. The project has untested drill targets on electromagnetic geophysics and geochemical targets, to discover new high-grade mineralised lenses to increase the project size.”
The company says evaluation of ICE suggests it is still open to the north and has not been explored for deeper lenses below existing mineralisation, particularly in the down-dip part of the deposit.
Further, there is potential to extend the deposit along trend to the north-north-east and south-south-west of the existing mineralisation, associated with a particular layer in the stratigraphic sequence.
Bastion Minerals is meeting with consultants in the Yukon province, to move exploration forward and define geochemical sampling and geophysics programs.
Bastion Minerals is an early-stage explorer focused on copper, gold, and green metals.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Bastion Minerals
