JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Canadian exploration and development company Ivanhoe Mines and joint-venture partner Chinese miner Zijin Mining are preparing to accelerate a planned infill drilling programme at the Kamoa copper project’s Kakula discovery, area, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), starting next month.
Speaking at the 15th World Copper Conference in Santiago, Chile, Ivanhoe Mines executive chairperson Robert Friedland said the Kamoa exploration team’s goal is to complete about 25 000 m of additional drilling in the Kakula discovery area in 2016.
The company is upgrading access and drill roads in the Kakula discovery area to support the additional diamond drill rigs, which will be mobilised to the site early next month.
“Our accelerated infill drilling program will target thick, flat-lying, shallow resources at grades materially higher than the average grades at Kamoa that potentially could be incorporated into our Phase One feasibility study, which could enhance the already robust economics that were reported in our independent pre-feasibility study on February 23,” said Friedland, adding that this would help ensure that Kamoa became one of the highest-grade new copper mines in the world.
The accelerated 2016 drill programme would initially focus on a 12 km2 area along the projected trend of mineralisation, intersected in holes DD996 and DD997, which were completed in 2015. The drill programme now also included follow-up infill drilling aimed at defining indicated resources in areas where the continuity of materially higher grade was confirmed.
The 2015 holes DD996 and DD997 ranked among the highest-grade and highest-grade-thickness intersections drilled to date within the Kamoa mining licence area.
Hole DD996 intersected 24.16 m of 3.48% copper, at a 1% copper cut-off. At a higher cut-off of 2% copper, the DD996 intersection was 13.16 m of 5.26% copper. Hole DD997 intersected 18.75 m of 4.64% copper at a 1% copper cut-off and 15.17 m of 5.33% copper at a 2% copper cut-off.
Ivanhoe Mines reported in January that the Kamoa exploration team had made a new tier-one, high-grade, shallow and flat-lying stratiform copper discovery, ideally situated for low-cost mechanised mining, in the Kakula discovery area, about 5 km southwest of the currently defined resources at the Kamoa copper deposit. The Kakula discovery was situated within the 400 km2 Kamoa Mining licence area and represented a major extension of the Kamoa copper deposit, which the company discovered in 2008.
Friedland said in the January announcement that the Kamoa copper deposit was already distinguished as the world’s largest, undeveloped, high-grade copper discovery. “The Kakula discovery has the combination of significant thickness, high grades and strike length that holds promise for significant and rapid expansion of the Kamoa copper deposit.”