And now for something completely different....

I should have read the PR properly!

A rehash!

A massive shock, BHP released some exploration results....

This either means two things

1. They're fecked and desperate for Eric Sprott's cash
2. They've found something huge and they want to show-off

There wasn't much to go on from the PR, just some assays ...

obviously hole AD-23 included an intercept of 1m of 180% Cu...

Why don't we compare this against the discovery hole for a small deposit called Olympic Dam.

Source: Geology for Investors (link)

Here is the data in Leapfrog (link).

First thing, it is quite deep...

1.2km depth, I wonder if they'll have more water to pump than Platosa?

Ivanoe - Makoko-loco

Ivanhoe have been finding massive amounts of copper in the DRC at Kamoa-Kakula, but they've just announced a new discovery (link) Makoko.

It was great that they included most of the drilling data in the press release, and from that I have been able to model the mineralization (Leapfrog Model here):

I've also used the data to come up with a resource guesstimate.

Not in the same scale as Kamoa, but a start.

Assumptions: These are based on the data used in the Kamoa PEA

Cut-off: 1% Cu

Specific Gravity: 2.8 to 2.9 depending on the Cu grades (the more Cu, the higher the SG)

Search Ranges: 

• 800m (Kamoa PEA) but 
• I've also included a 1600m range to match the 'limits' used in the various maps that are found on the Ivanhoe website.

You can clearly see that there is a core >4% Cu Zone that appears to be truncated by the Mafic intrusive, but, several wide-spaced holes (>500m apart) appear to show the >2.5% Cu mineralization extending to the SE.

Unfortunately, there appear to be some post-mineral mafic intrusions that appear to truncate the down-dip extension of the >3% Cu mineralization. The  good news is that the at the eastern and western limits of the drilling they are still intersection >2% Cu mineralization over moderate thicknesses (2-5m).

Mafic units in green - I'm assumed that they are approx. vertical cylinders, which is probably wrong 

It will be interesting to see if the Cu horizon continues beyond the intrusions, but if it does, it will be at ~700m depths. There have been a few holes drilled up-dip, but they have returned intervals grading <1% Cu.

Green Unit = Mafic intrusion; thin red unit = Cu bearing horizon.

However, I'm going to guess that my 'estimate' will be low. I've made a few annotations on the plan map above where there is a bit of "artistic license". You'll see how the influence of the low grade intercepts are being reduced to cause the smallest of ripples on the sea of high-grade mineralization that Ivanhoe want to show. It will be interesting if this 'interpretation' continues into the initial resource estimate or if the holes are treated a but more equally.

correction: it should read 800m DIAMETER around each DH

SolGold - Aguinaga - an initial review

DISCLOSURE - I OWN SHARES IN SOLGOLD

At last, some drilling away from Alpala (link)! SolGold have finished the first hole at Aguinaga (link). Unfortunately, I don't think the results will be very special, I'm guessing that they come in around the 0.4-0.6% CuEq level.

This is what we are told about the first hole:

Translation - feck, we hope it gets better at depth

It is very early days (1 hole), but the concern is that the Aguinaga Porphyry appears to be small and low grade. We see that the 'strongly mineralized porphyry' was intersected ~300m vertically below the discover which limits its extent to the NW and being just ~250m wide (horizontally) limits is potential to become huge. Bollocks!



The core photos from hole 01 look a bit anemic. They look similar to the low grade holes at Alpala, that typically ran around 0.5% CuEq (typically 0.3% Cu and 0.1-0.2 g/t Au)



At Alpala, if a drill hole was bulging with copper sulfides, Sol Gold would rush out an early release with partial results. They haven't done the same here, we get some confirmation of lack of optimism in the hole by the company in this statement.

i.e. the core looks crap, we're leaving the rigs to drill the good stuff

However, if we work back we know that the drilling would have passed through the 'well mineralized' porphyry around the start of April, so we should expect the results to be released before the end of the month if they are good enough to stand on their own. If they are below expectations, they'll be buried in a PR with a load of intercepts from Alpala.

I've created a separate Leapfrog project for Aguinaga, you can get the viewer file from here (link)

Timok - the Lower zone - part II

Deep porphyries, what more could a geologist want. Several weeks ago I asked a simple question (link):

Will it be good or bad!!

We have some more results from Lower Timok (link) that put a few holes into this area.



They also drilled a few holes in the core of the deposit, and as they also announced that they'll have an initial resource estimate by mid-2018, i decided to have a go, and so here is one of my wonderfully pathetic resource guesstimates (TM). You can get the Updated LF views from here (link)

Quite big!

UPDATE - I used relatively crude grade shells for the CuEq calculations (multiples of 0.25% CuEq), I've updated this table using a 0.2% CuEq scale (so 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 etc).



This helps to smooth the data and prevents the final tonnages and grades being skewed.

In the last post (link) I used a 400m base range, and commented that this may be to large for resource calculation, so I've been conservative and reduced it to 300m, which I'm more comfortable with using as it is a reasonable value to define inferred resource.

Remember - using a very big search ranges is a good way to inflate resources in all deposits. In porphyries - anything above 300m is starting to look unrealistic, and is a good thing to check. In exploration, I like to use twice the average drill-hole spacing as a first pass.

It is looking quite robust,  shame it is at ~800m depth, but the numbers are still good enough to support a large underground operation, especially as they'll be making oodles of cash from the upper deposit.

Exploration upside

I also want to see if it can get bigger, from just a giant deposit to a massive one. With the CAPEX required to develop a large underground mine, Nevsun will want something that will support a 20+ year mine life. Again, if you see a project with a <10 year mine life, unless it has exceptional grades, it is best to avoid. It may pay back the CAPEX, but you want something that will generate enough revenues to develop the next project.

Here we have good news and bad news. Looking at a few sections through it

Yellow = long section location
cyan = cross section locations

Long Section

Damn, my great idea was crap. The could of holes drilled to look for the SE (left) continuation hit virtually nothing, and to the NW, the grades are decent, but we are getting very very deep (almost 2km).

SE Cross section

We can see that to the NE mineralization is closed off, but maybe below the Upper zone, we could see more mineralization. It is relatively shallow (~900m depth). I've doodled on what I think is the high temperature core, where normally there isn't much mineralization, but potentially it could mean that they only half of the system has been drilled. It would be nice to see some section showing Moly and vein-type distributions (*cough* *cough*).

NW Cross section

We're much deeper, but the mineralization is open to the NE and SW.

So there appears to be some obvious areas to expand the mineralization. however, I would like to see Nevsun start to use directional drilling or drilling wedge holes (similar to SolGold at Alpala).

Alacran - Sting of the Scorpion

PDAC season is in full flow, and lots of companies are pushing out press releases to telling us that they are great, everything is going super-well and please don't ignore us and sell our stock as we have no real news.

One of my favorite pig in lipstick press releases was from Cordoba Minerals (link), not only announcing an updated resource for Alacran, but telling us that theyz got cobalt az well, m8.

Fuk uz Forst Cobalt

We'll ignore that and look at the resources.

Original, Jan 2017 resources

hard to read, but resources calculated at $1300/oz Au and $2.50/lb Cu

New and improved resources:

@ $1400/oz Au and $3.15/lb Cu

I liked the interesting metal prices used, Cordoba was a little generous with the gold price, but why don't we do some maths and see how the project has grown with another successful year of exploration.

I mean, look at that, they increased resources by ~27%. That deserves a good hug and a nice pat on the back, we'll ignore the fact that as the tonnes have increased, those nasty little copper and gold atoms have been efficient with their New Year resolutions. Those pricks have been on a diet!

and given the deposit a stunningly unimpressive negative increase in contained metals.

• Copper 
• Grades dropped by 22%
• contained metal stayed essentially the same
• Gold
• Grades dropped by 32%
• contained gold dropped by 15% or 94,000 ounces

So, basically you've made Alacran worse. Well done!

Ankakori - the first hole

DISCLOSURE: I should have bought more

What a whopper! A great first hole from Regulus at Antakori (link). They have been very intelligent and the initial drilling is focused at filling in the gaps left by [insert name here].

You can download the 3D model from here (link) - please not that this file is big, I've included the topography and overlain the property boundary and some geophysics in the 2006 technical report.

Summary

• Antakori is a complicated multi-phase mineral system. dominated by:
• High-sulfidation Epithermal - Au, Ag, Cu and As rich
• this is what is mined by the neighbors to the SW
• Skarn/porphyry mineralization - Cu +/- Zn, Ag, Pb rich
• Great first hole, plugged into a nice high grade zone identified back in 20XX
• Mineralization is Epithermal (high-sulfidation) - hole will be Enargite (Cu-Au and As) rich
• AK-17-001 didn't go deep enough to test the skarn/porphyry potential, but hole AK-17-002 will!

Hole AK-17-001, 002 and 003 have been drilled along the SW margin of the property, where it butts up against the Tantahuatay Mine.

my annotations - is that mag low to the north a porphyry?

 Hole AK-17-001 went smack between historic holes SDH-034 (120m @ 0.63 g/t Au and 0.67% Cu) and SDH-037 (188m @ 1.07 g/t Au and 2.02% Cu) drilled in 2012, and demonstrate that this zone appears to be quite high-grade and robust.

here is a cross section

pink = HS-epithermal domain; blue = skarn domain

You can see where hole AK-17-001 has hit, the copper grades are very good, but the gold is restricted to a narrow (23m core length or ~ 10m true width) zone grading ~ 7 g/t Au with a lower grade halo, suggesting that there could be some high-grade veins in the core of that hit.

And a long section with some distances on it.




Why don't we take a bit of time to look at the Antakori property. To steal a football pun, it is a project of 2 halves:

1. High-sulfidation Epithermal deposit
2. Skarn-porphyry deposit

HS-Epithermal Mineralization

This is what they are mining next door and looks like this:

Dickite, hehehe

The enargite is the issue here, it contains arsenic, and historically this project is regarded as having an arsenic issue. It does, but it is local, and it will be a problem for the neighbors if (when?) they start expanding the open pit into this area (with a nice NSR to Regulus is they do!).

The Skarn-porphyry mineralization

Simple formation model - Porphyry + limestone = skarn

Peru has a few big 'uns (Antamina, Las Bambas, Tintaya etc.) that produce a lot of metal. The historic drilling has hit some skarn, but it hasn't been drilled systematically, and this is where a lot of potential for AK is. I was a bit disappointed that hole AK-17-001 didn't go deep enough, but a minor grumble.

It looks like this:

doesn't look impressive, but can be big!

However, hole AK-17-002 should be going a lot deeper properly looking at the skarn potential at Antakori, and is the hole I'm interested in!

So, early days, but it is good to start the 2017 drilling with a nice hot hole. A bit of a cheat (focusing on infilling a known high-grade zone, but might as well test the lowest risk targets to get the juices going.
However, I have a few questions:

• How much input do Regulus have in this drilling campaign, are they restricted by their partners?
• Do they have permitting to explore the entirety of the project or are they restricted to specific areas?
• Why are they drilling that gold project in the US?

This is going to be an interesting, developing story, I'm happy with the first results and would like to see some evidence of regional exploration (cheap, low-end stuff), and maybe some geophysics to see if there are other decent targets in the area.