LONDON (Alliance News) - Amur Minerals Corp on Thursday said it has completed almost half of the planned drilling for its 2016 Maly Kurumkon-Flangovy drill programme at Kun-Manie in Russia, and has expanded the pipe at its step-out drilling after receiving results from its first drill hole in June.
The Russian development miner said the early start of the drill season and higher-than-anticipated drilling rates have resulted in the completion of 38 holes, totalling 7,469.2 metres, since early May, which is almost half of the total planned 15,000 metres for the year.
Amur Minerals said its focus has been on the western limit of the Area A, where high-grade nickel and copper results have been drilled and exceeded expectations. The company said the "current inferred drill resource appears to be understated with regard to thickness, grade and contained metal", and the resource could be as much as 50% thicker with an average grade increase of 10%.
Amur Minerals said the drill discovery of another 400 metres of high-grade nickel and copper mineralisation immediately to the west of the inferred resource indicated that the Maly Kurumkon-Flangovy deposit is at least 2,600 metres in length, and showed "very similar grades and thicknesses to that of the inferred resource".
"Results from the first drill hole in June immediately modified to our plans. This first hole intersected the high grade pipe where mineralisation was not anticipated to be present based on surface geological information. We immediately expanded the step out drill programme and have now extended the pipe a further 400 metre long along bringing its total length to 2,600 meters," said Chief Executive Robin Young.
"Two of the holes have intersected mineral thicknesses of 50 metres which contain nickel grades ranging from 0.82% to 0.98%. This new mineralisation should add substantially to the resource inventory and contribute to the project potential," Young added.
Shares in Amur Minerals were down 3.0% at 4.17 pence on Thursday.
By Hannah Boland; hannahboland@alliancenews.com; @Hannaheboland
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Amur Minerals (AMC)