Cooper Metals Ltd (ASX:CPM) has identified five broad gold anomalies for follow-up work from an infill soil sampling program at the Gooroo Project in Western Australia.
The anomalies occur in potentially favourable structural trap sites such as the nose of the Gullewa syncline and significant regional faults traversing the greenstone belt, known to be important for the formation of gold deposits elsewhere in the belt.
Infill soil sampling returned higher values in some areas when compared to the initial 200-metre sampling program completed in early 2022, with a maximum of 24.7 parts per billion (ppm) gold returned from anomaly 3 over mafic rocks.
Looking ahead, fieldwork is underway to ground truth the gold anomalies and auger drilling is planned to expand geochemical sampling to areas under cover.
Highly anomalous areas
Cooper managing director Ian Warland said: “Follow-up infill soil sampling has identified five highly anomalous areas at Gooroo.
“Anomaly 3 has a peak gold value of 24.7ppb in mafic greenstones, proximal to interpreted faults that may have been important plumbing mechanisms in the region for gold mineralisation.
“These latest results are exciting given the high prospectivity of the Gullewa Greenstone Belt and the lack of exploration in the southern portion of the Gullewa syncline.
“Fieldwork is underway by geologists to ground truth the gold anomalies and plan auger drilling in areas where outcrop is covered by colluvium, masking any geochemical response at surface.”
About Gooroo
The Gooroo Project is about 413 kilometres north of Perth and nearby mining projects include Silver Lake Resources Limited's Deflector mine with ~1.27 million ounces of gold at 13.5 g/t and 3 million tonnes at 0.8% copper.
Cooper is targeting Orogenic gold and copper-gold mineralisation of the Deflector style in the highly prospective Gullewa Greenstone Belt in the Murchison Province of the Yilgarn Craton.
Soil sampling program
Cooper completed infill soil sampling on a 100-metre spaced grid over anomalous gold areas identified in the 200-metre regional soil sampling survey reported in early 2022.
To date, 593 infill samples were collected taking the total number of soil samples to 1,104.
Encouragingly gold assays up to 24.7ppb were returned from infill sampling, with samples greater than 4ppb considered anomalous.
Gold anomalies were ranked more highly based on their strength, the presence of other anomalous pathfinder elements such as arsenic, the amount of anomalous gold sample results occurring in proximity together and the proximity of the gold anomalies to mapped greenstone outcrop and/or interpreted faults.
Forward plan
Cooper has kicked off a field trip to ground truth the four priority gold anomalies ahead of planned auger drilling later in the year.
Auger drilling is planned in areas of cover where basement rocks are not exposed.
Furthermore, Cooper has submitted a program of work to the regulators and drilling will commence after the necessary approvals are received.