American West Metals will start its 2025 exploration program at the company’s Storm copper-zinc project in Canada within weeks, aiming to further define high-grade copper discoveries and rapidly grow its mineral resource potential in the Somerset Island region.
Notably, the company says only a fraction of Storm’s 110-kilometre-long fertile copper belt has been tested by a drill bit.
Having recently focused on delivering a preliminary economic assessment for the project, a royalty funding deal and a new strategic alliance, American West now has its 2025 exploration campaign firmly in its sights.
The company has prioritised three large-scale targets, including two within 5km of the Storm deposit, for this season’s drilling program. Exploration is slated across the Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor, where previous drilling identified copper for more than 20km.
The Tornado-Blizzard target within that corridor hosts a 3.2km by 1.5km geochemical copper anomaly and two large electromagnetic plates that are yet to be drilled.
At the Midway target, a single historical hole intersected 58 metres of visible copper sulphide.
Meanwhile, Tornado South to the south of Tornado-Blizzard, offers a large structural hotspot presenting a textbook setting for copper mineralisation.
American West also has high-grade discoveries ready for resource definition drilling, which could potentially help the company quickly increase its mineral resource estimates.
It also plans to follow up some tantalising drill intercepts at its Cyclone Deeps deposit, which recorded a headline 10m at 1.2 per cent copper from 311m, including a 0.5m slice at 3.7 per cent copper from 325.5m.
Previous drilling at The Gap returned 20m at 2.3 per cent copper from 28m, including an 8m hit at 5.3 per cent copper from 39.6m, after a strong electromagnetic anomaly was confirmed as a priority copper target.
The company also wants to throw a drill bit into its Cirrus Deeps deposit, which has a high-priority electromagnetic target with a similar geological setting to Cyclone Deeps.
American West Metals managing director Dave O’Neill said: “All of the Storm copper deposits remain open and provide immediate growth potential. In addition, the Cyclone Deeps, Cirrus Deeps and Gap discoveries of 2024 are not yet included in the current MRE, and all these high-grade zones represent further opportunities for drilling to expand the known resources.”
The massive 2200-square-kilometre Storm project currently holds a total resource of 20.6 million tonnes at 1.1 per cent copper and 3.3 grams per tonne (g/t) silver, equating to 228,500t of contained copper and 2.2M ounces of silver. Importantly, less than 5 per cent of its massive 110km prospective stratigraphy has been systematically explored to date.
The majority of American West’s work so far has focused on the immediate Storm estimated mineral resource area, however O’Neill said the wider region also offers enormous potential for significant discoveries.
He said the high-priority Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor could add multiple Storm-style discoveries to the company’s current tally.
To help get drilling underway, American West has progressed development activities on site, including relatively cheap but important geotechnical, resource, processing and environmental studies for an ongoing pre-feasibility study.
A fourth-quarter sealift operation to the Somerset Island site in Canada’s Nunavut province delivered bulk supplies to streamline the logistics, reducing the 2025 program costs by about $4 million. It also meant a shorter lead time to kick-off drilling.
The company will also undertake geophysics work to generate new targets within the area and to build a pipeline of targets for drill testing.
American West’s to-do list also includes an airborne mobile magneto-telluric (MMT) survey over Storm and wider areas of interest along Storm’s 110km prospective copper horizon.
The survey is designed to show a greater contrast between host rocks and potential accumulations of conductive material, such as metalliferous sulphides, with better spatial and depth resolution.
The company says the method may be useful for occurrences of copper sulphides deeper than 200m at Storm.
The survey is scheduled to start at the same time as camp preparation and opening, allowing for the results to feed into subsequent drill targeting and prioritisation.
Earlier this year, American West entered a partnership and funding agreement with United Kingdom-based trading services company Ocean Partners, which will provide up to 80 per cent of the initial capex for Storm’s development in return for a 100 per cent offtake of the project’s copper and silver production. The partnership was accompanied by a $2M capital raising by Ocean Partners in April.
The preliminary economic assessment at Storm projected a US$149M (A$232.4M) net present value and 46 per cent post-tax internal rate of return for a 10-year open-pit mining scenario.
The known deposits at Storm remain open and the company is well funded to advance towards production now. Its upcoming exploration plans give American West plenty of scope to grow the mineral resource and expand its mine life once production begins with minimal drilling. It seems there is no shortage of targets to go after in this mineral-rich region.
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By Belinda Hickman
