LONDON (Alliance News) - W Resources PLC Thursday said rock sampling from the Crato Assumar Arronches area of its Portalegre gold project in Portugal has identified a number of encouraging copper-gold surface values, and it will now widen the focus of its targets.
The tungsten and gold exploration and development company, with assets in Spain and Portugal, said gold grades from the sampling programme included 1.385 grammes a tonne and 0.881 grammes a tonne, and indicated good surface samples of copper including 0.77% and 0.43%. Other notable metal contents were 833 grammes a tonne of silver, 2.38% lead, 1.60% zinc, 254 parts per million molybdenum and 840 parts per million tungsten, it said.
"As a result of these very encouraging copper results, the next step of the programme is for the exploration team to widen the focus to copper and gold targets as it carries out mapping, trenching and drilling over the coming months," the company said in its statement.
It said new soil sampling results show a 9.5 kiliometre target structure copper-gold anomaly from the same Crato Assumar Arronches area, with encouraging gold values up in excess of 1000 ppb. The anomaly remains open towards the southeast and northwest, it said.
It has also identified a new copper anomaly in the southern part of the area covered by the survey.
"The reassessment of Portalegre/CAA as a large copper-gold prospect creates major upside for W over and above our tungsten production, development and exploration portfolio,2 Chairman Michael Mastermann said in the statement. "Our priority for exploration on CAA now has a more defined focus on the 9.5 km copper-gold anomalies highlighted by the surface sampling."
W Resources shares were up 1.7% at 0.92 pence Thursday morning.
By Steve McGrath; stevemcgrath@alliancenews.com; @SteveMcGrath1
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