Thor Energy commences drilling at South Australia project

Highlights:

• The drilling programme comprises three water bores for hydrogeological baseline assessment, and subsequent push-pull and tracer testing as part of the first phase of In-Situ Recovery (ISR) Site Environmental Lixiviant Trials.
• This programme is the first step in assessing whether the Alford West orebodies are amenable for sustainable recovery of copper using ISR. This is a low impact, small footprint form of metal recovery that significantly reduces the surface impacts and allows rehabilitation of the land back to its original farming state.
• The work at Alford West follows on from Thor’s successful drilling and copper recovery hydrometallurgical work at its adjacent Alford East Copper ISR Project.
• If these ISR trials are successful, they will significantly increase the potential to extract economic copper via ISR along the Alford Copper Belt. This area of known copper oxide resources extends over 50 km along the contact between the Tickera Granite and the Wallaroo Metasediments.
• The Alford West Copper ISR Project includes the Bruce, Larwood, and Wombat deposits, with a Mineral Resource Estimate of 66.1 million t @ 0.17% Cu containing 114 000 t of contained copper.

Leon Faulkner, Managing Director of EnviroCopper, commented:

“This work on the Alford West Project further strengthens both EnviroCopper’s strategy to develop ISR copper projects for the state of South Australia and its relationship with key partners including Alligator Energy.”

Nicole Galloway Warland, Managing Director of Thor Energy, commented:

“Water bore drilling has now commenced at ECL’s Alford West Copper Project. The first step will assess whether the Alford West orebodies (Bruce Larwood and Wombat deposits) are likely to be amenable to sustainable recovery of copper using ISR. If the trials are successful, it will highlight the significant copper potential of the Alford Copper Belt (comprising Alford East and Alford West ISR Copper Projects), and its potential to be a future “green” copper-producing opportunity for South Australia.

“We look forward to updating the markets as the field activities progress.”

Read the article online at: https://www.globalminingreview.com/mining/08072024/thor-energy-commences-drilling-at-south-australia-project/