Noronex has unleashed its reverse-circulation (RC) rig on a 5000m drilling program to test several parallel mineralised shear zones in its hunt for giant copper deposits at its Fiesta project in Namibia.
The program is designed to pursue new concepts evolved from the company’s review of historical drilling that reveals steeply-dipping sheets of mineralisation more than 4km long and which correspond to several shears.
The important trove of historical data includes a substantial 123-hole exploration program completed at and along strike from Fiesta by EISEB Exploration between 2009 and 2015 in a joint venture (JV) with Cupric Canyon – a private equity-backed mining company. A solid part of that drilling hit copper mineralisation along a 3.5km strike distance at Fiesta.
Noronex says the mineralisation is hosted within a narrow, steeply-dipping sheet of mineralisation that corresponds to the characteristic, prospective and copper-rich NPF-D’Kar contact horizon on the northern limb of an overturned, sheared and faulted antiformal structure.
Better intercepts from the old work include 8m at 2.5 per cent copper and 78 grams per tonne silver from 127m in one hole, while a second hole delivered 9m at 1.8 per cent copper and 82g/t silver from 224m. A third hole nailed 13m going 1.4 per cent copper and 1g/t silver from 118m in oxide and a further 31m running 0.9 per cent copper and 33g/t silver from 154m.
A combined total of at least 35 diamond and RC drillholes report copper mineralisation that is attributed to the Fiesta target area.
The company notes that the anomalous historical intercepts seem to share many of the characteristics and signatures of other copper deposits that lie more than 400km to the east in the adjacent country of Botswana. The deposits include MMG’s massive Khoemacau-Zone 5 copper mine in Botswana, which contains a resource of 370 million tonnes at a copper equivalent grade of 1.7 per cent.
Noronex’s latest drilling is being undertaken under the terms of its recently-established JV and earn-in agreement with a wholly-owned subsidiary of South 32 – one of the industry’s big hitters and which is funding the program. The company is drilling multiple holes along multiple “fences” of drillholes it has established across several shears that either coincide with the critical NPF-D’Kar contact or cross-cut it, sometimes taking in both of the key contact lithologies.
The program will test several distinct zones within a strike extent of about 5km and across the structural and lithological suite within about half that distance. Management has also completed a gravity survey at Fiesta, which has defined an extensive gravity low that it also plans to probe with the drill rig. It is also close to winding up a complementary gravity survey across its contiguous Damara project, north of the Fiesta/Humpback tenement block.
And once drilling is completed at Fiesta, the rig will move to the Damara project, which will soon feel the bite of the drill bit for the first time. By then, Noronex is likely to have have picked up some useful tips, tricks and data from its experience with the Fiesta drilling. Bulls n Bears