{australien_flagge}Has Tennant Minerals (WKN A3ET0R / ASX TMS) hit the jackpot? The company is reporting more exceptional drill intercepts with high-grade copper with gold at its Bluebird brownfield copper-gold project near the mining town of Tennant Creek in Australia’s Northern Territory.
Geologists suggest that the shoot currently being drilled at Bluebird may be just the upper part of a much larger deposit. Mineralization continues to depth and westward, geologists believe. Tennant Minerals is already planning follow-up drilling to test for extensions of the high-grade zone starting in April, and drilling is also planned to test up to 13 other priority magnetic copper-gold targets identified along the 5 km Bluebird gravity corridor.
Results from the two just-released step-out drill holes support the potential of the new discovery at Bluebird. Hole BBDD0010 returned 35.5m @ 2.58% Cu, 0.27 g/t Au from 194m (downhole), including 18.0m @ 4.74% Cu, 0.50 g/t Au, including 5.0m @ 6.53% Cu, 0.67 g/t Au from 197m and including 5.6m @ 8.06% Cu and 0.84 g/t Au from 205m. The deepest drill hole, BBDD0011, returned 29.3m @ 1.76% Cu, 0.21 g/t Au from 195.7m including 17.2m @ 2.67% Cu and 0.22 g/t Au and including 7.3m @ 5.59% Cu, 0.36 g/t Au from 195.7m.
These two recent copper-gold intercepts are similar to the previously reported spectacular BBDD0009 intersection of 50.0m @ 2.70% Cu and 0.52 g/t Au from 158m, including 24.0m @ 5.01% Cu, 1.01 g/t Au, but are believed to be underneath the thickest part of the dipping copper-gold deposit.
Tennant Minerals Chairman Matthew Driscoll commented, “These exceptional results from the two step-out drill holes at Bluebird reinforce our view that we are just beginning to see the top of this high-grade copper-gold deposit. The new results indicate that the thick and high-grade copper mineralization continues to the west and is fully open at a grade similar to the previously reported 50-meter intercept of high-grade copper at BBDD0009.”
The mineralization intersected at Bluebird is typical of the high-grade copper-gold orebodies in the Tennant Creek mineral field and similar to the historically mined Peko deposit located just 20 km west of Bluebird. Peko has historically produced 147,000 tonnes of copper at a grade of 4% and 414,000 ounces of gold at a grade of 10 g/t.
The two step-out holes are the last of five diamond drill holes in the recent 1,048m drill program at the Barkly project, which aimed to test extensions of the Bluebird copper-gold discovery – including below previous holes that ended in high-grade copper and gold mineralization. All five holes intersected intense hematite alteration with visible copper mineralization.
Figure 1: Bluebird section 448,360mE showing the 35.5m interval of high-grade copper in BBDD0010
Drill holes to date have just penetrated the transition to the primary sulphide zone at Bluebird. This next phase of drilling will test extensions of the high-grade copper and gold mineralization to the west and at depth.
The planned follow-up diamond drilling program will test the up-dip and down-dip extensions of the copper-gold mineralization at Bluebird in the coming weeks, and will also target the down-dip extensions of Bluebird (see Figure 2) with step-out drilling 40 m to the west to determine the immediate extent of the copper-gold discovery.
Figure 2: Longitudinal projection of Bluebird deposit with the results of BBDD0010 and BBDD0011. With imagination you can see the deposit continuing to grow to the west, which the new drilling will test. Has Tennant Minerals hit the jackpot?
Figure 3: Bluebird cross section 448.340mE showing sections BBDD0011 and planned drill holes with target.
Prospective targets along the 5-kilometer Bluebird corridor:
Tennant geologists suggest excellent potential for discovering multiple high-grade copper-gold shoots on the Barkly Project within the 5km gravity corridor with coincident magnetic high points. Previous interpretation of magnetic imagery identified over 13 priority targets including the Bluebird copper-gold deposit and the historical Perseverance gold mine (Figure 4).
Figure 4: Gravity crest on Barkly E28620 showing the Bluebird prospect and magnetic targets in the Bluebird corridor.
Gravity and magnetic highs within the Tennant Creek mineral field are associated with iron enrichment and primary or secondary magnetite, which correlate with copper-gold mineralisation. Greater than 20% iron is associated with the Bluebird copper-gold mineralization which means that other magnetic and gravity highs within the 5km Bluebird corridor may also be copper-gold deposits.
The Bluebird deposit is essentially “blind” with only weak geochemical indications at surface. Previous drill holes along strike from Bluebird have failed to penetrate the near-surface leached zone and properly test the other gravity and magnetic targets. Further modeling of these magnetic and gravity data is underway. However, it is already apparent that several coincident gravity and magnetic targets remain to be tested along the 5 km Bluebird corridor (see Figure 4 above).
Conclusion: the high-grade copper-gold mineralization now confirmed by drilling at the Bluebird prospect puts a big exclamation point behind the new discovery. The example of the neighbouring Peko mine shows comparable grades that have been mined highly profitably even if the deposit is of moderate size. However, the discovery at Bluebird contains an additional element that distinguishes it from previously known deposits near Tennant Creek: Geophysical data indicates a strike-length of 5 km long gravity and magnetic high corridor. This corridor now provides geologists with a prime exploration target that has hardly been tested. For in the best-case scenario, Bluebird is not only a high-grade deposit, but may also prove to be a substantial copper-gold ore-body with multiple repeats. Perhaps Tennant Minerals really has hit the Jackpot at Bluebird!
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