Victory Mines has made a return to drilling at the company’s Coogee copper-gold discovery, near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, launching into a 6,000-metre program. The company has started testing a larger porphyry target and host of copper-gold mineralisation associated with a buried intrusive body.
Previous exploration over the Coogee target has already returned a quiver of impressive drill intercepts, with recent resampling returning 17 metres at 1 per cent copper and 1.98 grams per tonne gold, including 10m at 1.28 per cent copper and 1.91 g/t gold from 77m down-hole.
The current drilling will focus on the new Coogee porphyry target and a recently identified copper-gold trend extending north of the porphyry.
It is also expected to deliver further resource definition over the Coogee gold deposit.
Victory Mines Executive Director, Matthew Blake said:“The new drilling programme offers significant potential to expand the footprint of the previously identified copper‐gold porphyry target in addition to developing the groundwork for a potential understanding of the two new gold‐copper trends located immediately north of the Coogee open‐pit.”
Victory’s Coogee gold project, 55km south-east of Kalgoorlie in WA, began its life as a simple acquisition of an old high-grade open pit gold mine with a residual resource however, it is quickly evolving into something quite different.
Whilst the company’s initial drilling programs concentrated on defining gold-rich extensions to the Coogee pit, both at depth and along strike, Victory’s technical team began to notice the presence of copper alongside the gold in the drill spoil, which quickly piqued the geologist’s curiosity.
In recent weeks that interest has grown considerably and has now become a key driver of the company’s exploration program.
Victory’s escalation of its activity has been bolstered by copper trading at over US$10,000 per tonne and Lefroy Exploration’s stunning discovery of a porphyry copper-gold rich deposit at Burns, less than 15km south-east of Coogee.
Lefroy’s Burns discovery has highlighted the potential for intrusive style mineralisation across the ancient Western Australian terrane, with other high-profile examples of this style of mineralisation being De Grey Mining’s Hemi deposits in the Pilbara and the monster Boddington copper-gold mine, which lies hidden in the eucalypt forests south of Perth.
Boddington is owned by multi-national gold miner Newmont and hosts a metal endowment of more than 25 million ounces of gold. The operation routinely pushes out more than 700,000 ounces per annum and also pockets a tidy copper credit from the sale of concentrates, providing a stark example of what might be up for grabs at Coogee.
Victory now looks to have its hands full as it sets about probing the sizeable porphyry target at Coogee. Drilling is flagged to follow up on previous exploration results along strike from the Coogee pit and to begin testing the geophysical target to the north-east of the mine, which shows all the hallmarks of a deep-seated intrusive.
Victory’s new drilling at Coogee and the enticing mix of copper sulphides in drill spoil has put the company on the market’s radar and is now certainly worth keeping an eye on, as its looks to unearth a porphyry copper-gold deposit in the months ahead.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
