Inforrmation gained from a drilling program at Philippine Metals' Taurus project on the island of Leyte has greatly advanced understanding of the mineralization potential.
This has led the company to put on hold further drilling activity and accelerate plans to conduct an airborne electromagnetic survey over the entire 9896 hectare tenement.
To date exploration work at Taurus has included surface mapping, sampling and trenching and the completion of orientation geophysical work including 20 line km of induced polarization (IP) and ground electromagnetic surveying covering the Buen Suerte Area.
Drill testing in one of the areas of known copper mineralization was initiated to better determine its nature, mode of occurrence and the calibration/orientation of the IP survey. Six drill holes aggregating 792.5 metres were completed, with the first four holes focusing on the Buen Suerte Area and two holes on the Malayahay Area.
The drilling results indicate the copper mineralization in the Buen Suerte Area is gently dipping stratabound-type volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) mineralization, rather than the structurally bound mineralization management anticipated.
Results include 1 metres from 96.1 metres @ 1.68% copper, 1.55 metres from 23.4 metres @ 1.68% copper, 1.35 metres from 49.85 metres @ 3.02% copper, 0.2 metres from 56.65 metres @ 1.14% copper and 0.65 metres from 57.3 metres @ 2.69% copper.
Philippine Metals believes the airborne electromagnetic survey is the most appropriate, cost-effective and time-efficient tool to identify this type of VMS mineralization and progress exploration of the project.
A powerful, state-of-the-art helicopter-borne time domain EM system (HTEM) survey is being initiated over to provide coverage of the entire tenement. The survey will utilize Geotech Airborne Malta Ltd's 26 metre diameter loop system, which is capable of depth penetration ranging to 300 metres, and therefore will survey a very large volume of ophiolite for conductors associated with VMS mineralization.
Philippine Metals' CEO Feisal Somji says, “Confirmation of the strata bound nature of the mineralization provides a significant constraint to the horizon of the mineralization and enables us to recalibrate our exploration focus. The airborne survey results will be a critical next step in unlocking the potential of Taurus.
“Given the size of the mineralized ophiolite covered in the tenement and the widespread nature of the mineralization known to date, we expect a significant cluster of copper-zinc targets will be discovered over the next year. This expectation is supported by new discoveries stemming from our ongoing mapping, sampling and trenching activities across the tenement.”
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