Sheffield drills high-grade copper at Moonlight

Vancouver – A trio of drill holes by Sheffield Resources (SLD-V, SLDOF-O) on the Engels mine area of its Moonlight copper property in northern California’s Plumas County has cut into a zone of high-grade copper mineralization.

The three initial core holes all encountered high-grade copper starting from surface. Hole 07-E-1 returned 54 metres of 2.95% copper, including a 2-metre section averaging 10.9% copper, before it hit a void at 58 metres and was halted due to lost circulation. Sheffield notes two main intervals of mineralization in the intercept along with sections of broken rock thought to possibly be stope-fill from past underground workings.

Hole 2, drilled from the same collar as hole 1, averaged 2.54% copper over 44 metres including an 8-metre interval of 8.84% copper that also contained a 2-metre section of 19.15% copper. The hole was also lost when it hit an old mine adit and lost circulation.

The third hole returned 28 metres of 2.99% copper with higher grade intervals of up to 10.8% copper over 2 metres.

Sheffield president David Jenkins describes the drilling as “the first modern holes in the Engels mine area and also above the historic workings.”

Engels is located just east of the company’s main Moonlight deposit that hosts an indicated resource estimate of 104 million tonnes grading 0.37% copper and 0.1 gram gold per tonne. An additional 44.3 million inferred tonnes of 0.33% copper and 0.1 gram gold have also been reviewed.

The Engels mine and the near-by Superior mine operated between 1914 and 1930 to reportedly produce about 161.5 million lbs. of copper from around 4.3 million tonnes of ore. The operations also produced about 23,000 oz. gold and 1.9 million oz. silver.

Moonlight was previously explored from 1966-1971 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 after it opted to proceed with development of its Gibraltar copper mine in central British Columbia at the time. The property remained in Placer Domes project inventory for about 30 years.

“Our goal (at Engels) is to find a starter pit to go with the oxide material Placer outlined at Moonlight,” further stated Jenkins.

The Engels mine project is situated on privately owned land that could potentially undergo a more rapid permitting process.

Following its high grade copper results, shares of Sheffield closed up a dime in August 14th trading to close at 35 apiece. Based on its 26-million shares outstanding, the company posts a $9-million market capitalization.