Thor Mining PLC (LON:THR, ASX:THR) reported peak values of 0.25 percent copper and 0.17 grams per ton gold from its maiden drilling program at the Dundas gold project in Western Australia.
The 66 hole air core and RAB drilling program was designed to test the top section of weathered bedrock in a portion of a 6 square kilometre anomaly identified from 2010 surface calcrete sampling.
The drilling returned strongly anomalous copper values - more than 250 part per million - from 20 holes. Most of these define and lie within a 100-200 metre wide zone trending north-south through the area tested, coincident with the axis of the geochemical anomaly. Peak values of 2,751 ppm and 1,291 ppm are considered to represent copper mineralisation.
Anomalous gold values – more than 10 ppb - occur in 16 of the 66 holes, mostly coincident with the axis of the geochemical anomaly. More importantly, peak values of 174, 75 and 62 ppb are considered to indicate the occurrence of gold mineralisation.
Each of these samples is located within the copper-anomalous zone and is associated with an elevated copper assay.
The mineralised zone outlined by this geochemical drill program is open to both north and south, Thor said in a statement.
Thor has identified at least five other areas of gold and copper anomalies, which warrant better definition by more detailed infill sampling.
The next drilling program at Dundas will give priority to further testing of bedrock beneath geochemical anomalies, including the extensions of the mineralisation identified by the program just completed.
The mineralisation identified by this drilling will then be tested by deeper drilling later in the year, in conjunction with the testing of additional targets generated by the geochemical programs outlined above.
Chairman Mick Billing said today: "These first results in the top metre or so of bedrock are extremely encouraging, particularly the strong copper values. We have only drill tested a small portion of this anomaly and we are generating more targets with each field trip. We will be scheduling follow-up drilling as a matter of urgency.”
The Dundas project is situated in Western Australia within the Albany-Fraser Province. The project tenements lie on the general strike-extension of the most prolific gold-bearing belt of the Yilgarn Province - the 700 kilometre Wiluna-Kalgoorlie-Norseman greenstone belt.