Infinity Mining has begun an electromagnetic survey across three of its projects in the Pilbara region as the company aims to home in on nickel, copper, gold and zinc anomalies.
The explorer is surveying its Strelley Gorge, Panorama and Hillside projects near Marble Bar to identify drill targets for its upcoming exploration planned for 2023.
Infinity says the survey covers the dominant structural corridors within greenstone belts in the East Pilbara district including recently identified geochemical nickel, copper, gold and zinc anomalies at Hillside.
A 2018 helicopter electromagnetic survey identified 18 anomalies the company considered worthy of further exploration at Hillside. Follow-up rock chip sampling returned several gold results, including 30.25 parts-per-million and 21.89 ppm gold. Another assay from the southern area of the project returned copper results at an impressive 70771 ppm or 7.08 per cent.
Historical exploration at Hillside has been conducted by several companies including Alcoa in 1980 and Great Southern Mining in 1984. Great Southern conducted a rock chip sample program that returned 20 results with more than 1000 ppm copper with one sample reaching 7800 ppm or 7.8 per cent copper. In 2019 FE Limited, as part of a joint venture at the time with Infinity, completed a 36-hole scout program that returned anomalous copper results.
Infinity Mining Chief Executive Officer, Joe Groot said: “This is an important piece of work for the company as it builds a drilling program for the 2023 Pilbara field season. Very little geophysical information is publicly available for these tenements and the helicopter electromagnetics data will give the technical team an excellent view on where to best focus our drilling.”
The explorer says both the Hillside and Strelley Gorge projects have the potential to host copper-rich volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits similar to the nearby Sulphur Springs and Kangaroo Caves deposits.
Sulphur Springs holds 17.4Mt at 1.3 per cent copper, 4.2 per cent zinc and 17 grams per tonne silver whilst the Kangaroo Caves deposit hosts 3.55Mt at 6 per cent zinc 0.77 per cent copper and 15.2 g/t silver.
Strelley Gorge consists of a single tenement covering 11.2 square kilometres at the northern end of the Shelley monzogranite complex, about 4km north-west of the Sulphur Springs deposit. The survey will cover the entire tenement to identify anomalous conductors that show potential copper-zinc sulphide mineralisation.
The Panorama project consists of three tenements covering 252.3 square kilometres about 40km west of Marble Bar. The western side of the project is located over a complex structural area on the eastern edge of the Shelley monzogranite complex that also hosts Sulphur Springs and Kangaroo Caves. The survey over Panorama West will cover the exposed and concealed parts of the project to identify anomalous conductors generated by massive copper-zinc sulphide mineralisation.
The survey results from across all three projects will be processed in 3D to identify anomalous electromagnetic conductors. The two Hillside surveys will also be merged with the existing 2018 survey data and used to identify extensions of the already defined conductive targets.
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By Matt Birney
