31 January 2023
American West Metals, Tuesday, 31st January 2023
American West Metals Limited (ASX: AW1) (“American West” or “the Company”) is pleased to report on its Quarterly activities for the period ending 31 December 2022. During the December 2022 quarter.
“This quarter has seen the return of final assays for the drilling at Storm, and the continuation of intensive study work on the West Desert and Copper Warrior Projects.
“The drilling program at the Storm Project continued to exceed our expectations, and our maiden drill program has been a huge success. The program has expanded the volume of mineralisation at the 2750N Zone, and discovered a new, potentially large, sedimentary copper system below the near- surface mineralisation.
“Planning for the follow-up exploration has been completed and will include a significant expansion of activities with the addition of an RC drill rig and an extensive ground geophysical program. Exploration will also expand into new areas with an aim to highlight the belt scale opportunity at Storm.
“Detailed work has significantly progressed the West Desert JORC compliant mineral resource estimation. An important part of our modelling process has been to apply rigorous economic and development overlays, to confirm our robust mining proposals for the project.
“Work has also continued on the Copper Warrior Project with the reinterpretation of recent IP data revealing a number of high-priority anomalies. These exciting copper exploration targets will be drill tested once permitting for the program has been approved.
“We have a big 2023 planned and we look forward generating strong news flow in the coming months.”
The final assays were received for American West Metals maiden drilling program at the Storm Copper Project during the quarter.
A total of ten drill holes for 1,534m was completed during the 2022 program (Figure 5), with 997m drilled at the shallow and high-grade 2750N Zone, and with 537m completed targeting high-priority exploration geophysical targets that were defined in the 2021 Fixed Loop Electromagnetic (FLEM) Program.
Most of the drill holes completed at the 2750N Zone have successfully intersected thick zones of breccia and/or massive copper sulphides (mostly chalcocite) hosted within much broader intervals of vein and fracture style mineralisation.
There is excellent potential for further extensions to the 2750N Zone with strong copper anomalism in soils and rock chips along strike for over 1km from the known mineralisation. Massive chalcocite has been mapped in outcrop to the west of the 2750N Zone, with assays of rock chips up to 62% copper.
Faults are believed to be a major control on mineralisation. Further drilling will aim to define the structural architecture of the 2750N Zone, and to expand the economic potential of the Storm area by defining resources at the highly prospective 2200N and 4100N Zones. These opportunities offer outstanding upside and large-scale potential for a low-footprint, direct shipping ore (DSO) type operation.
Work is continuing to progress the potential near-surface mine development pathway for the Storm Project, in parallel with the accelerated exploration and delineation program.
Beneficiation and metallurgical test work on drill core from the 2022 field season (ST22-02) will create a definitive processing flow sheet for a direct shipping ore (DSO) product from the representative near- surface Storm mineralisation. Previous test work on these ore types has produced a >53% copper DSO product using a full-scale ore sorter and with no further processing or optimisation (see our ASX Release dated 11 April 2022 – Over 53% Cu Direct Shipping Ore Generated at Storm Copper).
The potential to produce a high value and high margin DSO product at Storm could present an opportunity to provide a short lead time, potential pathway to generating revenue for the Company. Ausenco has been engaged and has commenced work on defining and initiating the permitting pathway for this style of operation at Storm.
This work will also include the commencement of environmental baseline studies during Q2 2023 within the Storm Prospect area and a newly defined transport corridor between the Storm Prospect area and the coast.
Read the comprehensive release here.