Bastion Minerals has confirmed the high-grade potential of its ICE copper-gold project in Yukon Territory, Canada, after delivering a maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE).
The MRE outlines 6.43 million tonnes (Mt) at 1.07 per cent copper, including indicated resources of 5.76Mt at 1.09 per cent copper and inferred resources of 0.67Mt at 0.83 per cent copper, using a 0.3 per cent cut-off grade.
“It is a great result to announce a JORC Code MRE for the ICE copper-gold project in Canada,” Bastion chair Gavin Rutherford said.
“The new JORC MRE not only confirms the copper contained in the original 1998 foreign historical estimate but also demonstrates the potential to add substantial, additional value from the gold, cobalt … silver and zinc in the deposit, which were not included in the original estimate.”
ICE’s mineralisation begins at surface and is potentially amenable to open-pit extraction, with 92 per cent of the resource classified as indicated.
The deposit outcrops and lies within a sequence of submarine basalts and brecciated basalts, with the mineralisation largely hosted in porphyritic basalt.
To date, less than one per cent of the project area has been drill tested – multiple geochemical and geophysical targets provide potential for discovery of additional mineralisation zones
“One of the many exciting features of the ICE project is that detailed exploration to date has only been concentrated on the ICE deposit,” Rutherford said.
“We therefore have huge potential for additional mineralisation along strike and at depth from the known mineralisation, given drilling to date covers less than one per cent of the entire project area.
“There are 11 exploration targets already defined within the project, which as yet have had no follow-up exploration.”
Reprocessing of electromagnetic survey data has revealed untested conductors to the north-north-east and south-south-west of the ICE deposit, highlighting the potential for multiple volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) mineralised lenses.
Subscribe to Australian Resources & Investment and receive the latest news on commodity prices, resource developments, executive movements and more.