Rio Tinto’s Kennecott continues drilling at Alderan Resources’ Frisco project in Utah
Alderan expects to announce further drill results later this month.
Rio Tinto’s (ASX: RIO) subsidiary Kennecott Exploration is continuing drilling at Alderan Resources’ (ASX: AL8) Frisco copper and gold project in Utah.
Hole SAWM0011 is underway and is testing a conductive anomaly identified in an induced polarisation geophysical survey of the Reciprocity-Accrington area.
The anomaly is a 450m by 250m conductor, which is believed to host copper-gold mineralisation.
Alderan managing director Scott Caithness said the conductive anomaly hole SAWM0011 is testing lies between the historical Washington and Imperial copper-gold mines.
He said Alderan viewed it as an “exciting high priority target”.
“The drilling is expected to be completed in October 2022, with assays likely in early 2023,” Mr Caithness said.
Frisco project
A hole Kennecott completed on the Accrington target in 2020 returned 34m at 0.99% copper and 0.14 grams per tonne gold from 153m.
Alderan’s own drilling in the area intercepted 54m at 1.4% copper and 0.19g/t gold from 46m.
Frisco is about 300km southwest of Salt Lake City and hosts numerous historical workings that are prospective for copper-gold and lead-zinc-silver.
Notable historical operations at the project comprise the Horn silver mine and the Cactus and Imperial copper mines.
Kennecott signed an agreement in November 2019 to earn up to 70% of Frisco by spending US$30 million on exploration. The expenditure is over three stages and 10 years.
Under the first stage of the earn-in, Kennecott must spend US$6 million on advancing Frisco by November 2023.
This would give Kennecott a 55% interest.
Kennecott is focused on porphyry-style copper-gold-molybdenum at the project.
Utah projects
Alderan has four projects in Utah that are prospective for copper-gold and manganese.
The company recently completed a 22-hole reverse circulation program at the Detroit project in the region, with the focus of this campaign on the Mizpah oxide gold deposit.
Drilling targeted near-surface mineralisation where historical exploration uncovered 10.7m at 2.2g/t gold from surface and 9.2m at 2.1g/t gold from 6.1m.
Mizpah is 2km north of the historical Drum oxide gold mine which Alderan drilling in the first half of this year and intercepted 6.6m at 2.5g/t gold and 17.8m at 1.7g/t gold.