Bu Dun Hua Porphyry Copper Project

Summary

KSO acquired the Bu Dun Hua project in 2007 after recognizing porphyry Cu style alteration around a modest quartz-hematite vein system known locally as the Lao Ping Tong mine.  Despite widespread sand and colluvium cover, KSO worked systematically outwards from Lao Ping Tong and late in 2009, discovered the Whitehorse Cu-Mo mineralised porphyry intrusive complex.  Through 2010, the company not only established key geological and geochemical criteria for ongoing exploration at Whitehorse, but also discovered a series of other potentially mineralised porphyry intrusives forming a structural corridor both east and west of Whitehorse.

This discovery of this porphyry system, under sand cover often tens-of-metres thick is considered a validation of  KSO’s selection of Inner Mongolia as an appropriate exploration environment for low cost discovery of new bulk-mineable porphyry style deposits.

Geological overview

The Bu Dun Hua project is located in a northwest-concave Palaeozoic fold belt traversed by a NNE trending belt of Mesozoic intrusives and volcanics that elsewhere hosts a number of significant epithermal gold, porphyry copper and skarn copper deposits.

Within KSO’s tenement area, outcrop is poor outside of a prominent, central, northeast trending ridge of silicified felsic volcanic flows and fragmental rocks   Prior to KSO’s involvement, previous explorers had focused on a small area of precious and base metal anomalies associated with a series of fault structures on the south flank of the ridge.  The largest of these structures (Lao Ping Tong) had been prospected by shallow underground workings.  Geological and geophysical investigations of the Lao Ping Tong area by the Inner Mongolian Geological Bureau and the China Academy of Sciences proposed that the fault system may be underlain by intrusives at shallow depth. 

KSO Exploration

In 2008, KSO undertook detailed mapping, geophysical surveys, surface sampling and drill testing of two fault zones in the Lao Ping Tong area. The presence of widespread quartz-sericite-pyrite alteration with Pb/Zn mineralisation and porphyry-style veining in each hole provided strong evidence of a nearby mineralised porphyry intrusive.

In 2009, it drilled 6 diamond holes the second of which discovered a Cu-Mo mineralised intrusive plug at what was to become the Whitehorse prospect approximately 1km northeast of Lao Ping Tong.  Three of the four subsequent holes in the same vicinity intersected strongly quartz-sericite-pyrite-clay altered granitic porphyry rocks under tens of metres of colluvium and drifting sand cover and varying thicknesses of equally strongly altered felsic volcanics rocks.  Anomalous Cu ± Mo values occasionally exceeding 1,000ppm Cu and 200ppm Mo occurred throughout the intrusive intercepts and intermittently anomalous Au, Ag and As values were noted in the wallrock volcanics. 

Through 2010 a further 7 diamond drill-holes established a roughly circular 700m diameter geometry for the multi-phase Whitehorse intrusive.  It also established that anomalous Cu-Mo values were restricted to the intrusive rocks whereas locally strong Pb-Zn mineralisation occurred both within and peripheral to the intrusive. Significant Ag mineralisation was found in veins traversing and peripheral to the intrusive.   Petrographic studies on the core further established that the phyllic alteration encountered throughout each drill-hole into the intrusive body, represented a late stage alteration over-print of an earlier Cu-Mo mineralised potassic alteration phase.  This is consistent with classic porphyry Cu deposit models that predict the prime target zone (potassic zone) to occur at depth underneath the phyllic zone. Chalcopyrite-mineralised (i.e. Copper) potassic altered clasts from breccia dykes encountered in the drill-holes support application of this model at Whitehorse and deeper drill-holes are to be undertaken through 2011.

Also in 2010, in response to discovery of precious and base metal anomalies, intrusive rocks and alteration in scattered outcrops up to several kilometres from Whitehorse, KSO conducted a project-wide high resolution magnetic survey.  The results exceeded all expectations defining not only a series of major structural controls but also a number of Whitehorse magnetic profile look-alikes that together with surface anomalies have produced seven new altered-intrusive-porphyry drill targets.  In addition the survey has indicated a large underlying parent intrusive body that may also be altered and mineralised.

Ongoing exploration will be aimed at both investigating the Whitehorse system at depth and scout drilling the other potential intrusive porphyry targets.