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(Sharecast News) - Resource explorer and developer Empire Metals released an analysis of the historical geochemical sampling compiled to-date on the Pitfield Copper Project in Western Australia on Thursday.
The AIM-traded firm said the mapping showed "extensive" copper, silver and other base metals anomalism over a 40 kilometre strike length, giving further confidence in the potential to discover a 'giant' copper mineralised system at Pitfield.
It identified an "exceptionally large" magnetic anomaly extending over 40 kilometres north-south in the airborne magnetic survey data, likely caused by a basin-scale alteration event.
A subsequent airborne electromagnetic survey identified a suite of highly conductive rocks within the Mt Scratch siltstone surrounding the magnetic feature.
Historical geochemical sampling by CRA in the vicinity of the magnetic anomaly indicated high background values for copper, silver, zinc and nickel, including up to 2.3% copper and 20.8 grams of silver per tonne from surface rock chip sampling.
Empire said Pitfield had the potential to contain multiple sediment-hosted stratabound copper deposits lying within what may be a 'giant' copper mineralised system.
Exploration field work would start by the first quarter of 2023, ahead of an intended drill programme to evaluate the economic significance of any such deposit.
"I am delighted to provide an update on our emerging Giant copper exploration project at Pitfield, where geochemical mapping has confirmed high background values of copper, silver and other base metals across almost our entire licence area," said managing director Shaun Bunn.
"Since significantly expanding the exploration camps within our portfolio from 3.1 square kilometres to 1,728 square kilometres earlier this year, thanks largely to the acquisition of three highly prospective large-scale copper-gold projects, we have focussed on successfully building up the prerequisite assay databases and geological, geophysical and geochemical maps initially for the Pitfield Copper Project."
Bunn said the information "underpinned" its hypothesis that Pitfield was potentially a newly-discovered giant copper system.
"Armed with this historical geochemical sampling data and the analysis of the AM and AEM survey, we will plan our next phase of surface exploration work before moving on to the evaluation of the economic significance of any SSC deposits through drilling."
At 1154 GMT, shares in Empire Metals were up 27.92% at 1.6p.
Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.
