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High in the Argentinian Andes Aldebaran Resources (TSXV: ALDE) has brought is Altar porphyry copper-gold project to the advanced exploration stage. The project has several deposits, but only two (Altar Central and Altar East), are included in 43-101 resources.
Altar Central and Altar East contain 13.2 billion lb. copper equivalent at 0.50% copper equivalent in measured and indicated resources. There is another 1.9 billion lb. at 0.47% in the inferred resource.
The estimate has total measured and indicated resources of 1.2 billion tonnes grading 0.43% copper, 0.09 gram gold per tonne, and 1.0 gram silver per tonne. There are 11.4 billion lb. copper, 3.4 million oz. gold, and 38.6 million oz. silver in this portion of the deposit. The inferred resource is 198.2 million tonnes grading 0.42% copper, 0.06 gram gold, and 0.80 gram silver, containing 1.75 billion lb copper, 400,000 oz. gold, and 4.8 million oz. silver.
The Altar Central and East deposits both have a supergene and a hypogene component, with a ratio of about 1:3, respectively, in the measured and indicated resource. The presence of supergene ore gives the project a potential, low cost starter operation that contains 2.96 billion lb. copper and 700,000 oz. gold.
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