AEMA, coalition launch legal challenge to BLM Conservation and Landscape Health Rule
The American Exploration & Mining Association was joined by a coalition in filing a challenge last Friday in the Wyoming district court.
Bell Copper announced that the Company has commenced drilling at its 100% owned Kabba project in north-western Arizona.
Bell believes that their efforts to date have resulted in the discovery of the top of a major Laramide porphyry copper-molybdenum system. The roots of this system contains abundant, but, sub-economic copper and molybdenum mineralization and outcrop to the west of the current drilling. An extensive 3 km by 5 km pyritic halo that bounds the copper and molybdenum mineralization in the outcropping root of the porphyry provides support for the interpreted large size of the system.
The targeted copper shell within the top of the porphyry, which normally hosts the higher grade copper mineralization, is believed to have been discovered 7.5 km to the east and approximately 1,200 m below surface. Bell has interpreted that the top of the porphyry system, located entirely within the Kabba property, was displaced east and downwards by a major, post-mineralization, low-angle fault.
A previous hole in the target area encountered a wide section of intensely altered rock, exactly what one would expect to encounter directly above the top of a major porphyry. Bell’s target at Kabba is a Resolution-type system which hosts published inferred resources of 1.624 billion tonnes grading 1.47% Cu and 0.037% Mo. Resolution is owned by Rio Tinto and BHP-Billiton and is one of several, billion-tonne copper deposits that have been discovered in Arizona.
In order to improve the success of this hole, K-10 is being drilled with larger diameter mud rotary equipment, with the hole to be cased down to approximately 1,000 meters through the alteration zone prior to switching back to diamond coring. The K-10 pre-collar is expected to be completed in late July, with coring beginning in early August. Using hole K-10 as a pilot hole, the Company envisions being able to wedge a number of subsequent holes from this cased hole, and to further test the porphyry in all directions from this hole to distances of up to 400 m.
Dr. Timothy Marsh, the Company’s President stated “We are very pleased to have secured the funding that enables us to continue to test this exciting target. Having participated in the exploration of a number of large copper deposits, the geological evidence at Kabba gives me confidence that we are on the path to a major discovery – a view of which is shared by a number of major mining companies that have recently expressed an interest in this Tier 1 exploration project.”
