Wuritu Copper Project

The Wuritu copper project is located approximately 18km south-southeast of the company’s Marmot Ridge Cu-Mo project. It was acquired from local interests in 2006.  Attention was initially focused on the Malachite Ridge prospect where a 280m long open-ended copper-in-soil geochemical anomaly enclosed scattered outcrops and float of a strongly malachite (copper carbonate)-rich quartz-magnetite-hematite rock.  Subsequent drill testing failed to intersect the anticipated underlying high-grade mineralisation but yielded anomalous copper zones and altered granitic intrusives at shallow depths.

The consequence of the drilling results was a step back to a more expansive approach to the project.  More widespread geological mapping, a magnetic survey, an IP survey and two generations of soil survey defined the Oyut area - a 25sq km area enclosing the Malachite Ridge prospect but taking in a series of IP targets, alteration (silicification, hematite flooding, pyritisation) zones and Cu-in-soil targets.  Trenching of three Cu-in-soil anomalies revealed a strong copper - iron oxide association, the most conspicuous yielding strongly anomalous Cu values concentrated on the edges of steeply-dipping and possibly steeply-plunging magnetite-hematite lenses. 

The meta-sedimentary sequence hosting the iron-oxide lenses and the associated copper anomalies includes several metre thick carbonate units.  The presence of these rocks in the proximity of underlying granitic intrusives is indicative of skarn-style mineralisation.  The IP anomalies, at least two of which are spatially associated with copper-iron anomalism remain to be drill tested.