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The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
More than 10,700m of drilling completed in Ambler District North of 60 Mining News – October 7, 2022
Ambler Metals' 2022 program included 8,376 meters of resource upgrade and geotechnical drilling at Arctic, the most advanced of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects.
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Trilogy Metals Inc. Oct. 5 announced the completion of the 2022 program at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects that included 10,739 meters of resource upgrade and geotechnical drilling at the Arctic mine project, and exploration drilling of targets across the wider property that covers much of the Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska.
Ambler Metals LLC, a joint venture company equally owned by Trilogy and South32 Ltd., originally budgeted US$26.2 million to carry out 10,000 meters of drilling at UKMP this year. It is now expected that the 2022 program spending will be closer to US$28.5 million, or about 8.8% higher than the budget, with the meterage drilled being about 7.4% higher.
The primary focus of this program was the 8,376 meters of infill drilling completed in 47 holes to increase confidence of the resource from the indicated to measured category.
According to the most recent calculation Arctic hosts 36 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 3.07% (2.44 billion pounds) copper, 4.23% (3.36 billion lb) zinc, 0.73% (541 million lb) lead, 0.63 grams per metric ton (730,000 oz) gold, and 47.6 g/t (55 million oz) silver.
A 2020 feasibility study for developing a mine at Arctic details a financially robust operation that would produce 1.9 billion lb of copper, 2.3 billion lb of zinc, 388 million lb of lead, 386,000 oz of gold, and 40.6 million oz of silver over an initial 12-year mine life.
Of the 47 holes drilled at Arctic this year, five were completed for a geotechnical assessment that was initiated last year and two for an ongoing geohydrological assessment.
Ambler also carried out 2,363 meters of drilling outside of the Arctic deposit with seven holes targeting copper-rich satellite deposits near Arctic and the Cosmos Hills area of UKMP, which is related to the Bornite copper-cobalt deposit.
Located about 16 miles (26 kilometers) southwest of Arctic, Bornite hosts 41.7 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 1.04% (955 million lb) copper; and 144 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.68% (5.33 billion lb) copper.
The deposit also hosts 88 million lb of cobalt in 184.8 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.021% cobalt.
Outside of Bornite itself, this area has not been systematically explored for similar carbonate-hosted copper mineralization since historical work was carried out by Kennecott in the 1990s.
In addition to exploration drilling of priority targets in the Ambler VMS belt and in the Cosmos Hills area, the 2022 program included detailed mapping and soil sampling to build on the work performed during the prior year. Field crews also completed 1,350 meters of trenching at Pardner Hill, a 3,000-meter copper soil and rock geochemical anomaly about 1.2 miles (two kilometers) west of Bornite.
The Bornite camp that supports the UKMP field programs is currently being shut down for the season, and Trilogy expects to begin reporting assay results from the 2022 program in the coming weeks.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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