Australian copper explorer American West Metals (ASX: AW1; FRA: R84) is gearing up for this year’s drilling season on its Storm Copper Project on Somerset Island in Nunavut with a dual strategy: Firstly, extension drilling is planned around the Storm resource (20.6 Mt @1.1% Cu, 3.3 g/t Ag), which according to the PEA forms the core of future copper DSO production. Additionally, the company also aims to exploit the significant untapped regional potential along the 110 km long Storm Copper Belt.
American West considers a 20 km long corridor along the Storm Graben, which includes Midway, Storm, and Tornado, to be particularly promising. According to the company, drilling preparations are already well advanced. Through recent review of historical data and reinterpretation of historical geophysical surveys, including a GeoTEM survey conducted by Noranda in 2000, the company has identified numerous large-scale targets with potential copper mineralization outside the already defined resource on the Storm project
In particular, the Midway prospect, located five kilometers west of Storm, could significantly expand the copper endowment in the graben. Midway has a historical drill hole from 2018 (AB18-04) that intersected 58 m with visible copper sulfide but has not yet been analyzed.
Figure 1: Plan view of the Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor with the 2018 drill holes to be sampled and analyzed, overlain by regional geology and topography. Details of the Storm Mineral Resource Estimate can be found in Table 3 and in the ASX announcement dated December 16, 2024.
Dave O’Neill, Managing Director of American West Metals, commented: “Our 2025 work program will build on the foundations created in 2024 and will involve a dual strategy that will advance both exploration and development of the project. As part of the regional assessment, we have identified numerous under-explored targets within the prospective 110 km long Storm Copper Belt. With a growing pipeline of regional drill targets, regional exploration in 2025 will aim to demonstrate the project’s potential. A focus of the 2025 regional exploration program will be the Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor – a prospective section of the Copperbelt that has all the hallmarks of a large-scale mineralization system. We believe there is significant potential to discover additional copper occurrences within this corridor and that we can rapidly expand the resource base of the Storm Mine.”
The immediate focus of regional exploration will be on drilling along the prospective Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor. This more than 20 km long mineralized trend lies on the known Storm copper deposits and is controlled by the large-scale and laterally extensive Storm Graben. The prospectivity of this area and the potential for substantial expansion of known copper mineralization is supported by compelling geological and geophysical data.
Tornado and Blizzard Prospect Areas
The Tornado property is located 5 km along strike and east of the known Storm deposit. The property is situated in an area with chalcocite and malachite-rich rock floats within a 3.2 km x 1.5 km geochemical copper anomaly. The large copper anomaly runs linearly parallel to the major structural features of the Storm Graben. Most of the anomalous copper samples were found near the interpreted northern graben fault, which has a similar position to the large and laterally extensive Cyclone deposit at Storm.
Figure 2: Oblique section view of the drill line at the Tornado prospect looking WNW. The image shows an MLEM image (CH18BZ) and geology (map view, top – warmer colors indicate higher conductivity) over 3D inversion shells from the 2011 VTEM survey (cross-section view, bottom – cooler colors indicate higher conductivity). The location of the section is shown in Figure 4 as A – A’.
Figure 3: Plan view of the Midway-Storm-Tornado corridor showing known copper deposits and faults, overlain with a GeoTEM image of apparent conductivity (warmer colors indicate higher conductivity contrast). Note the increased conductivity of the Cyclone deposit and the conductive trend within the Central Graben and towards the Midway prospect area.
Large Geophysical Targets
A recent review and reinterpretation of historical regional airborne GeoTEM and IP data (see ASX announcement dated October 29, 2021, Prospectus) has also yielded significant results and defined numerous targets for the potential discovery of additional copper mineralization.
The interpreted data show a series of extensive EM and IP anomalies that coincide with known copper occurrences and the main structures of the graben system, the interpreted main channels of copper fluid.
Of particular interest is a series of GeoTEM and IP anomalies located along the central graben – an ideal environment for sedimentary copper deposits. The anomalies are interpreted as deeper (~100-300 m depth) than the known copper deposits and are located in an area where no drilling has yet been conducted. These features could represent a southern extension of the Cyclone copper mineralization.
Several other anomalies were highlighted in these datasets, including strong coincident anomalies with the Corona and Cirrus deposits, as well as the Thunder, Lightning Ridge, and The Gap prospects.
Conclusion: Long-term investors such as Taurus, American West’s royalty partner, and commodity trader Ocean Partners have fully backed the Storm DSO copper project. They recognize that the Storm project is unique among copper projects worldwide due to the rare combination of simple processing, high grades, and open-pit mining. The current PEA for Storm already shows a project with a ten-year lifespan, combined with an extremely low CAPEX for a new copper project ($47.5 million). This year’s drilling around the Storm project could significantly extend the resource and thus the mine life, making the project even more financially attractive. The major opportunity American West has compared to other copper companies is to bring the project into production under its own management while retaining the benefits of the 110 km long copper belt.
