American West: New discovery and high copper grades
American West Metals (WKN A3DE4Y / ASX AW1) has drilled a total of 63 holes this year at its Storm copper project in Nunavut, Canada. This means that 9,756 out of 10,000 planned meters of drilling have been completed, with the majority (56) being so-called reverse circulation drilling. One of the aims of the drilling campaign was to define further material for an initial copper resource estimate within the known near-surface high-grade 4100N, 2750N and 2200N mineralization zones. And that goal was achieved with consistently excellent drill results.
Outstanding resource potential
With the 39 drill holes completed in the 41000N zone, American West, which has now earned 80% of the Storm project shares from cooperation partner Aston Bay (WKN A2AUFP), was able to prove copper mineralization on a large scale this year, which according to American West has “outstanding resource potential”. The mineralization is flat-lying and continuous over a considerable length laterally.
And the latest drill results presented by the company today are from the edge of the 4100N zone, strongly suggesting that the mineralization remains open laterally in most directions, according to American West. Already, the company has demonstrated high-grade copper mineralization in 4100N over a strike length of more than 1.3 kilometres, with thickness now reported at 400 meters. In the company’s last presentation, American West was still talking about a thickness of 300 meters!
High copper grades drilled again
Drilling highlights presented by American West today include:
– 4 meters with 1.1% copper from only 48.8 meters depth, of which 6.1 meters with 2.8% copper from 54.9 meters and 4.5 meters with 1.5% from 67.1 meters depth;
– 12.2 meters with 1.1% copper from 118.9 meters, of which 3 meters with 4% copper from 126.5 meters and
– 5 meters with 1% copper from 51.8 meters, 1.5 meters with 1.6% copper from 64 meters, 3.1 meters with 2.7% copper from 76.2 meters and 1.5 meters with 1% copper from 80.8 meters.
According to American West, these drill results and geophysical surveys indicate that mineralization could potentially be extended a further 600 metres to the northeast. In addition, it is encouraging that the drilling again demonstrates the strong correlation between targets identified by these geophysical surveys and copper mineralization. So, it’s a good thing that the company still has numerous untested geophysical targets…
Clear similarities to large copper deposits in Congo and Botswana
“This year’s drill program continues to impress with the remaining results from the backwash drilling now available. The results continue to expand the large-scale copper footprint at the 4100N zone with new thick zones of near-surface copper mineralization,” said Managing Director Dave O’Neill.
“Now that we have a complete picture of the resource drilling to date, it is clear that all near-surface high-grade copper zones are continuous and remain open with excellent growth potential. The case for a potential low-cost, high-margin DSO production scenario at Storm is becoming clearer.”
“Our exploration work has also been very successful, yielding new discoveries of near-surface copper and confirming the presence of high-grade copper sulphide mineralization at depth hosted in sediments. These achievements indicate the significant scale potential of the project and highlight the clear similarities of Storm to the large copper deposits in the Congo and Botswana, O’Neill concluded.”
Further work
American West is currently awaiting assay results from the fourth diamond core drilling (56 reverse circulation / seven diamond core holes in 2023) to further define the sediment-hosted copper system below the high-grade surface mineralization discovered by the first three holes. In addition, the results of the surface sampling and magnetic survey over the Tempest target area are still pending.
At the same time, American West is conducting ore sorting, processing and process optimization studies on various ore types from the 2750N and 4100N zones to confirm the potential for a Direct Shiping Ore (DSO) operation. And, last but not least, work continues on resource modelling and resource estimation for the Storm project.
Conclusion: Even though it seems currently difficult for copper explorers to please the market, the drill results presented by American West Metals are once again very promising in our opinion. Not only have high grades of copper mineralization once more been detected near surface, but it has also been shown that the end of mineralization in the 4100N zone is still not in sight. According to the company, the potential exists to extend the mineralization by 600 metres to the northeast alone, so there is the possibility of a further, truly significant extension. Apart from that, we believe that many investors have not even noticed that the thickness of the known mineralization has increased by a third (!) from 300 to 400 meters over the strike length of over 1.3 kilometres. In view of all this, we believe that the forthcoming first resource estimate for Storm could positively surprise some observers. Despite all the risks that certainly exist, we therefore still consider American West Metals to be very promising - especially as the exploration of the copper system at depth is still in its infancy.
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