Aston Bay and American West Metals Announce Drilling and Geophysics Underway at the Storm Copper Project, Canada - Seite 2

"We are very excited to be drilling again at Storm," stated Thomas Ullrich, CEO of Aston Bay. "This is the first of two significant drill programs our partner, American West, will be conducting this spring and summer, expanding on the known zones of mineralization and drilling for new discoveries.

"The drill bit has proven the effectiveness of Moving Loop Electromagnetics, so we are pleased to see this geophysical program underway again as well. By tweaking the parameters and increasing the power used in the survey, we believe we will investigate deeper with more confidence. This could uncover geophysical anomalies related to deeper-seated mineralization - excellent targets for diamond drilling in the summer season."

Foto: Accesswire

Figure 1: High-priority Electromagnetic (EM) and Induced Polarization (IP) target areas, current copper mineralized areas, overlaying aerial photography.

PHASE 1 DRILLING

Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling with a track-mounted RC rig has commenced on high-priority Electromagnetic (EM) and Induced Polarisation (IP) targets as well as areas of potential extensions within the Storm area (Figure 1). This is the first time a tracked RC rig has been deployed at Storm. This rig can move autonomously instead of requiring helicopter mobilization and is expected to provide operational and production benefits, with up to 12,000m of RC drilling initially planned.

Phase 1 of the exploration drilling will target existing EM and IP anomalies that are ranked highly due to nearby copper sulfides in drilling and areas of strong copper geochemical anomalism at surface. These compelling targets include an EM target to the immediate east of the Cyclone Deposit where an EM anomaly has been modeled with a very high conductivity of over 17,000 Siemens.

EM anomalies tested to date in the Storm area have been strongly correlated with higher-grade, >2% copper mineralization. Several IP anomalies that have been drill tested also show a positive correlation with copper sulfide mineralization in the range of 0.5-2% Cu.

Foto: Accesswire

Figure 2: Plan view of the Storm area showing the initial planned MLEM survey areas (configured for shallow and deep exploration) and location of the known copper mineralization and prospects, overlaying aerial photography.

PHASE 1 MOVING LOOP ELECTROMAGNETICS (MLEM)

The drilling program is running in parallel with a high-powered Moving Loop EM (MLEM) survey, which is initially being used to highlight the priority areas for expansion of the higher-grade copper mineralized areas and to identify new targets for drill testing (Figure 2).