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A handful of Arizona-focused copper juniors are making steady progress delineating resources and fine-tuning potential development plans towards feeding an independent, western supply chain.
Near the semi-desert town of Casa Grande, Arizona Sonoran Copper (TSX: ASCU; US-OTC: ASCUF) is outlining a scalable redevelopment of its brownfields Cactus mine project. The company is working to expand mineralization at Cactus, and hopes to complete a rescoped preliminary economic assessment (PEA) results will feed into the upcoming prefeasibility study (PFS), where ASCU is rescoping the Cactus base case PEA to include the Parks Salyer project’s oxide and enriched material.
While several high-profile copper projects in Arizona have been stalled by myriad permitting issues, Cactus’s brownfields status and its location on federal lands should make for shorter permitting timelines.
“Arizona has a mining pedigree,” project director Dan Johnson tells The Northern Miner during a February site visit, while pointing towards notable features in the Arizona desert that constitute the former mining operation or where the new developments will occur. He adds that permitting would not involve the federally mandated Environmental Protection Agency.
While permitting might still be some time into the future, VP for exploration Douglas Bowden says the company is currently looking to build scale. He believes the company could build a compliant resource base of more than 4 million lb. of copper.
To get there, the company is working on upgrading inferred resources at the Parks Salyer deposit with a 46-hole, 32,000-metre drill program at Cactus, located 64 km southeast of Phoenix. So far 35 infill holes for 23,689 metres have been completed.
On February 21, Arizona Sonoran released assays from seven infill drill holes at Parks Salyer, which is located on contiguous land 2 km southwest of Cactus.
Comments
Jeff kurtz
Unless the mine intends to discharge no water, the EPA Clean Water Act would be involved as well as NPDES discharge permitting