Exploration drilling by Ivanhoe Mines (IVN-T) has cut a new zone, dubbed Southwest Oyu, containing potentially significant porphyry gold, copper and molybdenum mineralization on the Turquoise Hill project in southern Mongolia.
Hole 150, the first deep hole to test the zone, reached a depth of 590 metres and averaged more than 1 gram gold and 0.81% copper per tonne over 508 metres (from 70 metres below surface). A 278-metre section (from 188 metres) ran in excess of 1% copper and 1.5 grams gold.
Ivanhoe has three more drill rigs on the way to Turquoise Hill. The company plans to sink 16,000 metres of diamond core to further delineate the system.
The hole was part of a 5,000-metre drilling program focused on the South Oyu zone, where previous work returned 46 metres averaging 1.4% copper and 0.34 gram gold, 300 metres from an earlier hole that hit 76 metres of 1.6% copper and 0.18 gram gold in a hypogene porphyry zone.
The latest exploration drilling cut hypogene mineralization in extensive quartz stockwork chalcopyrite and bornite sulphides and magnetite. This lies under a broad zone of near-surface copper oxide, which is potentially amenable to the solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW) process to produce cathode copper.
Ivanhoe has the conditional right to acquire the Turquoise Hill project by spending US$6 million on exploration and paying US$5 million to BHP-Billiton (BHP-N).
The project contains four other known porphyry zones over an area that measures 3 km by 2 km.
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