SkyTEM Survey underway at Okiep Copper Project
Orion Minerals Limited (ASX/JSE: ORN) (Orion or the Company) is pleased to announce that the Okiep District SkyTEMTM helicopter borne geophysical survey has commenced. Importantly, the SkyTEMTM survey includes the Okiep Copper Project area, located 570km north of Cape Town in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, which is currently under option to Orion.
Survey targeting Cu sulphide mineralisation hosted in mafic intrusive bodies
- SkyTEMTM Survey covering 1,827km2 underway at Okiep Copper Project.
- Orion’s high priority area of 857km2 will be surveyed at 150m line spacing.
- Survey expected to take 5-6 weeks to complete.
Orion’s Managing Director and CEO, Errol Smart, commented: “It’s almost unthinkable that a district that has produced more than 2 million tonnes of copper from sulphide ore with associated pyrrhotite has never been surveyed with airborne electromagnetic (EM) methods. Modern explorationists consider high power airborne EM as a primary exploration tool for this style of mineralisation.
“The powerful geophysical tools that we are using will be targeting mafic intrusive bodies with high magnetite content, that we expect will be detected with natural magnetism and that will have small zones of conductive pyrrhotite content associated with copper sulphides, that will be detected by the powerful EM instruments.
“We are also surveying the surrounding area in collaboration with Council for Geosciences, in order to identify the district scale structural controls on emplacement of the mafic intrusive bodies, that will assist all explorers working in the district, which we believe has potential to return to being a major copper producing district.”
Given the significant historic copper production and identified resources in the district, Orion is confident this first-time employment of high powered airborne electromagnetic (EM) tools will assist in identifying high priority drill targets aimed at the discovery of new high-grade copper deposits.
