Noronex’s copper angels clearly had a party in mind when they delivered a 45m intercept of 0.8 per cent copper and 23 grams per tonne silver from 144m at the company’s Fiesta prospect in Namibia.
The company says the find came after the hors d’oeuvres were first delivered to the table via the program’s first drillhole, with 2m assaying 0.68 per cent copper and 1g/t silver from 120m depth.
The entree was then served from the second hole that was found to be bearing the juicy 45m slice of the well-aged Kalahari Copper Belt (KCB). It included a tender centre of 13m going 1.5 per cent copper and 45g/t silver from 150m, in addition to a tasty side serve of 7m running 0.5 per cent copper and 14g/t silver from 233m.
This thick copper and silver zone of primary style chalcocite mineralisation reported over 100m from previous intercepts is very encouraging for defining a substantial mineralised system at the Fiesta Project. We are now targeting favourable structural settings for large deposits along strike from this mineralisation within the same system. Noronex chief geologist Bruce Hooper
Assays from the completed holes are the first back from a suite of six holes at Fiesta in the western end of the company’s Humpback project. It is part of a bigger 4000m program that will also take in the Blowhole prospect about 130km east of Fiesta, near the Namibian-Botswana border.
Fiesta lies within Noronex’s freshly-granted, 100 per cent-owned tenements. Drilling began at the prospect at the end of July, with all six holes successfully penetrating the surface cover of Kalahari desert sands, which have shown to be up to 100m thick.
Geologically, it is situated at the western sheared closure of a domal structure on the key prospective NPF-D’Kar contact. Noronex says its latest anomalous intercepts appear to share many characteristics of the deposits defined in Botswana some 400km to the east, including at the massive Khomecau Zone 5 deposit.
As previously revealed, historical drilling to date within the tenement area has defined a steeply-dipping sheet of potentially economic copper and other related mineralisation through 3.5km of strike that corresponds with the setting of the prospective shale and sandstones on the NPF-D’Kar contact at the western plunge of a sheared antiformal structure.
Several key targets have been defined both within and along strike from the mapped 3.5 km trend. The current program of RC drilling is designed to target known mineralisation and to explore other favourable settings further along strike for a substantial mineralised system.
The second of the new drillholes was plunged in a 250m-wide zone that was devoid of previous holes and its impressive intercept has significantly extended known mineralisation on either side.
A previously-reported hole, about 150m to the west of the new hole, reported 8m running 2.5 per cent copper and 78g/t silver from 127m, 4m at 2.5 per cent copper and 139g/t silver from 154m and 7m at 1 per cent copper and 52g/t silver from 184m.
More than 100m away to the east, another hole was shown to have 28m running 0.6 per cent copper and 41g/t silver from 138m and 5m running 0.7 per cent copper and 7g/t silver from 177m. Another hole, a further 200m to the east, assayed 13m going 1.4 per cent copper and 1g/t silver from 118m and 31m at 0.9 per cent copper and 33g/t silver from 154m.
The along-strike and down-dip regularity of the intercepts in the KBC are quite typical of the area and Noronex’s intuitions and interpretations are beginning to bear fruit as management gradually joins the dots.
The reason the Namibian part of the KBC has not been known as a great producer of copper to date is purely because of the depth of sand cover that has inhibited historical exploration. Further to the north-east, the sands thin out and historic exploration was greatly simplified and so the region was developed much earlier.
But the dynamic is now changing for Namibia with the advent of modern insights, modelling and exploration and drilling methods.
Following the current drilling at Fiesta, Noronex plans to move the drill rig to the Blowhole prospect near the Botswana border for a six to 10-hole program. While drilling is proceeding, more assay results will be incoming from the remaining four holes at Fiesta – and also from Blowhole – and the company will be planning new targets and drilling based on results.
So, the party is far from over and with a bit of good luck and management, the results from the first two holes might just be a taste of what could be served up next.
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