Barrick earmarks A$2m to gold hunt

COPPERMOLY will be free-carried through the next stage of exploration on its West New Britain portfolio of projects, while still retaining its 28% interest in the three tenements, with Barrick Gold’s A$2.2 million commitment for the second-half of this year.
Coppermoly’s farm-in partner Barrick, a subsidiary of global heavyweight Barrick Gold Corporation, will invest A$2.2 million in the remaining half of this year on exploration to advance three highly prospective tenements in PNG.
Barrick currently holds a 72% interest in EL (exploration licence) 1043 (Nakru), EL 1445 (Talelumas) and EL 1077 (Simuku) located in West New Britain, while Coppermoly holds a 28% interest.
Importantly, this multi-million dollar commitment means Coppermoly will be free carried through the next stage of exploration over the tenements, eliminating any immediate term exploration funding uncertainty.
Barrick has previously advised Coppermoly that it intends to begin a process to engage with market participants for the purpose of divesting its interest in the tenements.
The company has conducted a considerable amount of exploration on the tenements, and earned its interest through a farm-in by spending A$20 million.
The 2012 exploration programme will include exploration and drilling to begin as soon as possible.
Drilling is aimed at targeting the higher grade secondary copper enrichment zones at Nakru-1 and Simuku.
The Simuku project, which includes the Simuku and Talelumas exploration licences, currently, has an Inferred Resource of 200 million tonnes at 0.36% copper, 61 parts per million molybdenum, 0.06 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 2g/t silver, with an upgrade scheduled for completion in late July.
Earlier this year, a drill hole completed at the South Kulu prospect, 6km east-southeast of the Simuku project, showed copper mineralisation from 93-442m.
Importantly, results from the last hole drilled by Barrick indicate broad areas of copper and molybdenum mineralisation throughout the Simuku tenement.
Best intersections include 27m at 0.29% copper equivalent from 143m, and 2m at 0.15% copper and 286 parts per million molybdenum from 440m.
Drilling at South Kulu targeted a strongly fractured dioritic intrusive which consistently returned more than 0.2% copper and 20-50 parts per million molybdenum from channel rock chip sampling.
The target zone has at least a 500m strike length delineated from 2010 and 2011 mapping by Barrick.
At the Nakru Project, Coppermoly is working towards a maiden JORC Inferred Resource for the Nakru-1 copper-gold system, with results expected in July.
Nakru-1 is the most advanced prospect within the Nakru tenement, with an exploration target of 50-60 million tonnes at 0.7-0.9% copper. – Proactive Investors