Solid drill results for Copper Mountain ‘super pit’

The Copper Mountain mine near Princeton, BC, has stopped production just three times over the last 90 years, usually due to falling copper prices, not a lack of resources.

That’s good news for new owner Copper Mountain Mining (CUM-V), which had its initial public offering last June.

The company has been on the highway to production since it acquired the open-pit mining operation as a private company in late 2006.

Copper Mountain drilled 44,000 metres during 2007, came out with a resource estimate in August and completed an economic assessment by November that called for production of 1 million lbs. copper per year by the end of 2010. Now the company is working on a feasibility study due at the end of the first quarter.

The company says that recent drilling has shown that it’s difficult to define the limits of the mineralization in some areas.

That’s a good sign for Copper Mountain’s proposed ‘super pit,’ which would see three pits merged into one. The pit would be 3.5 km by 3.5 km, allowing the company to access more mineralization at depth.

Copper Mountain is drilling in and beyond the historically mined areas to upgrade and current expand resources, which included drill data up to July and total 2.9 billion lbs. combined

Current measured and indicated resources register in at 228 million tonnes grading 0.37% copper for 1.7 billion lbs. contained copper. Inferred resources stand at 197 million tonnes grading 0.31% copper totaling 1.2 billion lbs. copper. A cut off grade of 0.2% copper was used.

Recent drilling done about 150 meters west of Pit 2 returned a 122-metre intersection grading 0.69% copper, 0.29 gram gold per tonne and 1.71 grams silver.

Over in the saddle zone located between Pits 1 and 3, drilling intersected relatively shallow zones of mineralization above the known zone in holes QA-3 and 4. This improves mine economics by decreasing the strip ratio.

Hole QA-3 returned a 12-metre intersection grading 0.54% copper, 2.65 grams silver per tonne and 0.31 gram gold, reaching to 70-metres depth.

Hole QA-4 returned a 34-metre intersection grading 0.49% copper, 2.76 grams silver per tonne and 0.12 gram gold.

So far the company has received results from 130 drill holes for the 2007 season with another 34 holes expected by the end of January, which will be used in the feasibility study.