Toronto-based junior
Over five years, beginning in 2002,
In connection with the agreement, AMT will issue GM 25 million share-purchase warrants at escalating exercise prices ranging from 15 to $4.25 over five years.
The deal must still be approved by AMT shareholders at their annual meeting in early June.
AMT says it now expects to be able to bring its key asset, Copper Creek, to the feasibility and production stages, subject to the obtaining of requisite financing.
The property consists of two 3-mile-long mineralized belts that host shallow, high-grade, copper-bearing breccia pipes as well as large-tonnage, copper-porphyry zones at depth.
Reserves in the shallow breccia pipes total 9.9 million tons grading 1.42% copper and 0.031% molybdenum, whereas resources are pegged at 14.2 million tons of 1.24% copper in the measured and indicated categories and 9.9 million tons of 1.1% copper in the inferred category.
In the breccias at an intermediate depth, inferred resources are estimated at 4.4 million tons grading 1.34% copper.
Resources in the porphyry deposits total almost 300 million tons of 0.75% copper.
Originally, the Copper Creek project consisted of a grouping of five different properties:
two joint-venture properties with partners BHP Copper (a subsidiary of
a block of federal mining claims;
prospecting permits on state lands; and
a 780-acre private ranch.
Since 1998, AMT has had a 100% interest in the property formerly joint-ventured with BHP and has been earning a 51% interest in the Phelps Dodge property.
In the past five years, AMT has completed more than 151,000 ft. of diamond drilling and 34,000 ft. of reverse-circulation drilling. In addition, nearly 261,000 ft. of surface drilling was carried out by previous owners.
Since January, AMT has been assaying core obtained from last December’s drilling program on two primary targets: the Lower Mammoth-Keel zone and the American Eagle breccia.
AMT says the work has added about 5 million tons of high-grade resources and that infill drilling this year will boost these resources into the reserve category.
In the field, AMT has been evaluating more than 500 breccias that outcrop on the property, and the company has performed a deep ground-penetrating radar survey in conjunction with the University of Arizona’s Laboratory for Advance Subsurface Imaging.
AMT has obtained approval from Phelps Dodge to delay by one year any additional exploration expenditures on their joint-venture property in order to focus on drilling the Lower Mammoth-Keel resource.
AMT has also obtained an Aquifer Protection permit from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, paving the way for the excavation of a decline.
In 1997, as part of its earn-in requirement for the BHP joint-ventured property, AMT completed a feasibility study for the exploitation of three breccia-pipe deposits, named Childs-Aldwinkle, Mammoth and Old Reliable.
The study concluded that the Copper Creek project was economically robust at then-existing copper prices at an annual production rate of 55 million lbs. copper. Further optimization of the study in 1998 and 1999 improved grades and reduced estimated capital-development and cash-production costs. AMT says its ongoing efforts to add to the project’s reserve base will ease project-financing discussions and allow for the boosting of production rates.
In March 2000, the cash-strapped company obtained a C$500,000 loan from its largest shareholder, Norshield Investment.
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