Another quick update. I’ve been suffering from Covid for about
10 days, although thankfully I am on the mend. There has been some important
news on XTR this Friday, so it’s pushed me to write this. As usual the Market
is continuing to fail to understand quite what Xtract has with Bushranger.
There are two stories with Xtract’s exploration in
Australia, as I am sure those that have read these blogs before know!
The first is the exploration of the
preliminary pit, which is centred around the existing JORC.
The second is the expansion
exploration.
I would like to draw attention to Northparkes. In my first
blog on XTR I gave a brief overview of Northparkes and its similarities to
Bushranger. In it’s 2020 presentational overview it described itself as having
a primary commodity of copper, in a porphyry deposit type. 80% of it’s revenue
comes from copper. It’s 2019 Cash cost is $1.15lb Cu. It’s a mixture of block
and open pit.
The porphyry tends to sit upright and extends 200-300m
(about 100m from the main intrusion in each direction).
Northparkes was brought by CMOC from Rio Tinto for $820m
back in 2013 when copper was about $3.3lb (currently $4.4lb), I believe. This
would be about $1090m adjusting for today’s copper price.
Northparkes has 483mt at an average of .55%Cu, the Majority
of this in two intrusions (310mt).
Back to Bushranger and the first purpose; the exploration of the open pit.
Length:
We know that our porphyry it not upright and it’s lying on
its side at a dip of between 40-60 with Hole 1 delivering a length of 920m @ 0.3% Cu. Hole 1 was drilled approx.
300m to the NW of Hole 13, which was reported today and adds a certain 300m
onto the length of the mineralisation, giving 1220m. Hole 1 mineralisation also
didn’t start straight away from the hole (it was 100m in). We also know that
the end of Hole 1 went under and to the west of the main mineralisation, as Holes
8, 9 and 10 hit most of their mineralisation to the east of the Hole 1
intersect.
So, to conclude Hole
13 has added approx. 300m to the length of the deposit, Holes 14,16 and 24
could extend this further.
Width:
We know that Hole 9 has intersected 448m of Cu. Other drills
would support 200m to the SE end. Middle 450m (i.e hole 9) 300-400m approx. NW
end.
Holes 17 and 18 could increase the width to approximately
500-600m in places.
The final thing to consider when looked at the size of Bushranger
is that Hole 10 is approximately 500m SE of Hole 23. Hole 14 is approximately
1000m SE from Hole 10. To extend this further hole 25 is approximately 700m SE
of Hole 14. Hole 25 is firmly in the new unexplored Target zone.
Simply put, Bushranger now makes even the largest Northparkes
porphyry look small, currently without any further expansion we are probably bigger
than the Northparkes two largest porphyry systems added together, so around 400-500Mt,
with the extensions from 17, 18, 23, 16 all looking like they will extend this
even more, we are looking to be in the 600-750Mt at around a .35% so between 2.1mt
and 2.6mt of Copper. This is of course a very preliminary figure and there is
much I don’t know.
Holes 14 and 25 bring us to the second story; expansion exploration.
This is exploration outside of the open pit and existing JORC.
As I’ve said before anomaly maps only really tell us where
geology changes. It can pin-point intrusions, simply because of the unique type
of geology that intrusions are generally made up from, quartz-feldspar-pyrite
etc often iron rich and so conduct well. What they can’t tell is whether the
intrusion contains copper and gold as this is determined by the speed,
pressure, temperature of the internal creation of the intrusion along with the
type and make-up of the fluid.
We know that geophysics indicates that intrusion like expansions
might exist to the SE in two distinct zones.
Hole 14 was drilled to 822m, is should have entered the edge
of the new porphyry. I am doubtful it will have really got into any of the
mineralisation or good alteration though, my guess would be that the better
mineralisation is on the east side of the anomaly. That said XTR have described
Hole 14 as hitting sulphides, which is most likely chalcopyrite, which would probably
mean low grade copper .1 to .2%. This might not sound very exciting, however it
would indicate a ‘loaded intrusion’ with the right material and conditions for
mineralisation.
Hole 25, which is currently being drilled, should cut across
the crown of the porphyry. It will give XTR an incredible amount of geological
information, not least whether the intrusion is on it’s side like Bushranger, where
and what the make up of the quartz shell is, alteration banding and hopefully
where any mineralisation is likely to be.
This SE intrusion WILL be different to Bushranger, it will
be older and probably have been affected by different waves of fluid migration.
If we refer back to Northparkes, in a similar sized area, some of their
intrusions are gold heavy, some copper heavy, some a real mixture. The
similarity ends with size, as the SE intrusion is similar in size to ALL of Northparkes
put together.
Hole 25 still isn’t the be all and end all of the SE
porphyry, my best guess is that high grade massive alteration is probably
500-1000m south of Hole 25. Mineralisation in Holes 14 or 25 would indicate
another massive system.
Conclusions.
Hole 13 was very much, wrongly ignored by the Market, it
extended the above cut off mineralisation by about 300m to the SE, still all
shallow, still in the open pit. It is exactly what Xtract needs to ensure it
produces a JORC above 2MT of Copper.
Holes 17, 18, 20, 22 and 23 are all massive holes trying to
expand the footprint of the JORC.
Holes 16 is important as it extends the mineralisation further
SE by another 100-150m and should show good continuity to Hole 13.
The visuals and description of Hole 25 will be my favourite
of the next 10 days, I love the first hole in a porphyry crown.
