Sheffield cuts wide copper at Moonlight

Vancouver – Sheffield Resources (SLD-V, SLDOF-O) has been drilling away on its Moonlight copper property in northern California’s Plumas County looking to confirm structural and ore control parameters on the project, and to check for mineralization beyond the boundaries defined by a past operator.

Results include recent core hole 06MH-5 that cut a composite of 267 metres of copper mineralization in four zones including 68 metres (from 26 metres downhole depth) averaging 0.44% copper, 118 metres (from 136 metres) of 0.45% copper, then 56 metres (from 284 metres) grading 0.34% copper followed by a 25-metre interval (from 364 metres) at 0.32% copper to end in mineralization. The company believes the wide copper intercepts indicate significant expansion potential south of the project’s historical resource.

Moonlight was previously explored from 1966-to-1971 by a predecessor company of Placer Dome, now part of Barrick Gold (ABX-T, ABX-N), which spent about US$6 million on the project and completed over 30,000 metres of core drilling in 199 holes. The historic program resulted in a non-NI43-101-compliant mineable reserve estimate of about 162 million tonnes grading 0.39% copper (1.4 billion contained lbs. of copper) being reviewed. Placer designed an open pit for the historic deposit but it was never placed into production by the major, which opted to proceed with development of its Gibraltar copper mine in central British Columbia at the time. The property remained in Placer Dome’s project inventory for about 30 years.

Since Sheffield’s acquisition of Moonlight in early-2005, a review of the project indicates past drilling (all vertical and most to only 150-metres depth) may not have sufficiently tested the mineralized zones that are predominantly within nearly-vertical dipping veins systems, prompting the junior to initiate its angle drilling program using large diameter core. Further, past drilling was never tested for molybdenum, gold and silver, all of which occur in the system potentially adding to a copper equivalent grade. Copper mineralization at Moonlight occurs primarily as bornite and chalcocite in the periphery of a quartz monzonite stock.

Five core holes have been completed by Sheffield on the project since last year, returning intercepts of 185 metres of 0.54% copper and 7 grams silver per tonne in hole 05MH-1, 178 metres of 0.37% copper and 4 grams silver in 05MH-2 and 278 metres of 0.4% copper and 4 grams silver in hole 06MN-3.

The company plans fruther drilling at the project enroute to a scoping study to include an updated resource estimate.