PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Copper miner Oz Minerals will invest A$2.5-million over the next 18 months to support in-situ recovery (ISR) technology research at the EnviroCopper (ECL) Kapunda copper/gold project, in South Australia.
The funding would go towards investigating the potential economic extraction of copper through ISR at Kapunda, expanding on previous work done by ECL in cooperation with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the University of Adelaide.
Any intellectual property from the research agreement would be owned by ECL, and Oz Minerals would be granted a license, which would be world-wide, perpetual, assignable, irrevocable and royalty free.
ECL manage the Kapunda project under a joint venture with tenement holder Terramin Australia, to earn 75% interest in the mineral rights over metals which may be recovered via ISR, with Thor Mining owning 30% equity in ECL.
Terramin and ECR have estimated a combined resource of 47.4-million tonnes at 0.25% copper containing 119 000 t of copper using a 0.05% copper cut off. This resource estimate is only in respect of that part of the Kapunda mineralisation that is considered amendable to ISR, and only reports mineralisation that is within 100 m of the surface.
The agreement with Oz Minerals would not affect either Terramin or Thor’s holding in ECL or the project area.