NGEx Minerals Ltd. announced its exploration plan and strategy for the largest drill program to date at the Lunahuasi high-grade copper-gold-silver project in San Juan province. The field team is on site preparing for mobilization of drill rigs with drilling expected to start in early October.
By Panorama Minero
The Phase 2 drill program at Lunahuasi completed in the first half of 2024 delivered some of the highest-grade copper, gold, and silver intercepts drilled anywhere in the world and confirmed that Lunahuasi has both unusually high grades and large size potential.
The volume drill tested to date measures 400 meters by 900 meters by 960 meters and is open in all directions. High-grade holes mark the outer boundaries of the current drill pattern with the northern boundary marked by several significant drill holes including discovery hole DPDH002 that included 60m at 7.52% Copper Equivalent (5.65% copper, 2.04 g/t gold, 44.0 g/t silver); the southern boundary marked by DPDH021 that included 772 meters at 1.60% Copper Equivalent (1.02% copper, 0.64 g/t gold, 14.2 g/t silver), and the westernmost drill holes finishing in high-grade mineralization including the last 12 meters of DPDH022 grading 4.48% Copper Equivalent (3.82% copper, 0.59 g/t gold, 25.2 g/t silver).
These results set NGEx up for a very exciting drill season as the Company extends exploration into the large areas outside the current drill pattern that lie beneath very similar surface alteration.
EXPLORATION OBJECTIVES FOR 2024/2025
The upcoming Phase 3 campaign will be the largest program to date at Lunahuasi. The Company’s goal is to grow Lunahuasi into one of the best, new high-grade copper and gold deposits. The planned program will use 6 drill rigs and is expected to total up to 20,000 meters which will more than double the meters drilled to date. The main objective for the program is to grow the deposit through step-out drilling and to provide enough closer spaced data to develop an initial Exploration Target as a step toward an eventual resource estimate.
A planned magneto-telluric geophysical survey will help the Company define potential extensions including potentially providing vectors toward the central part of the Lunahuasi system. Core scanning and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into our core logging and geological interpretation processes is being implemented to improve work flows for more routine tasks and to give geologists more time for targeting and interpretation.
Wojtek Wodzicki, President and CEO, commented, “The upcoming drill program is focused on growing the Lunahuasi deposit, which remains open in all directions, and continuing to advance our understanding of this unusually high-grade deposit. Our interpretation, based on almost 18,000m of drilling completed, is that we have drilled only a small part of the Lunahuasi high-grade deposit, and that what we have discovered so far is likely to be the peripheral part of a much larger mineralized system. Exploration over the past few years in the Vicuña District has demonstrated that this unique area is capable of forming extremely large and notably high-grade deposits, and our geological team is confident that Lunahuasi will continue to surprise to the upside. Phase 1 drilling resulted in the initial discovery early in 2023, Phase 2 showed that the Lunahuasi deposit has exceptional grades throughout a large volume measuring at least 400m by 900m by 960m, and we expect Phase 3 will further extend mineralization and confirm Lunahuasi as one of the most significant discoveries of the last decade.”
