Noronex Limited has started drilling at the Fiesta Copper Project in the Kalahari Copper Belt in Namibia.
The drilling at the 100% owned Fiesta Copper Project has commenced on schedule under the recently announced Earn-in Agreement with a wholly owned subsidiary of South32 Limited.
South32 approved a minimum expenditure of A$3 million over five years for Noronex to test several copper targets.
Noronex has planned 5,000 meters of reverse circulation, with drill fences to test parallel shear zones across the mineralised sections, targeting large-scale copper deposits.
A gravity survey at Fiesta defined a central low-density zone that will be drill-tested.
The gravity survey is nearing completion on the Damara Project, with drill targets being assessed to follow on from the Fiesta drill program.
Exploration drilling was completed during the year on the Humpback licenses to drill Noronex’s extensive claim package, with a 4,900-meter drill program completed on targets identified at the Fiesta and Blowhole prospects.
Historical drilling at Fiesta defined a steeply dipping sheet of mineralisation over 3.5 km long, corresponding to the prospective contact of shales and sandstones in the D’Kar Formation on the western plunge of a sheared antiformal structure.
Noronex Chief Geologist Bruce Hooper said a new program is underway to test new geological concepts at Fiesta.
Hooper said it is fascinating to drill fences of holes across several parallel shear zones, looking for an extensive mineralised system. “The recent gravity survey is also assisting targeting at Fiesta as well as on our Damara targets, where we are learning more with a new dataset in areas that have never been drilled before,” Hooper said.
Following completion of the Fiesta program, drilling will commence for the first time at the highly prospective Damara prospects to the north.
The Fiesta Project lies on the western closure of a domal structure at the prospective NPF-D’Kar contact.
The anomalous intercepts recorded previously appear to have many hallmarks of the deposits defined in Botswana over 400km to the east, including Zone 5 (370Mt @ 1.7% CuEq, MMG1). The historical drilling has defined several steeply dipping sheets of mineralisation over four kilometres long, corresponding to several shears.
Previous drilling has returned several highly encouraging intercepts, which the current program will aim to extend.
Noronex’s exploration package in Namibia now covers ~8,700 km2 with 3,500 km2 applications on the highly prospective but relatively underexplored Kalahari Copper Belt, which runs from central Namibia to northern Botswana.
The tenements contain ~300 kilometres of strike length targeting the key NPF-D’Kar formation contact point where most copper deposits occur on the Kalahari Copper Belt.
The 2012 JORC original claim package has an existing JORC (2012) resource of 10mt @ 1.3% Cu.
