RIO airstrip and camp fuel talk of its biggest find in 25 years - this story just won't go away, page-347

This post by Onceover led me to look at some of the data posted over the last year and cast it in yet another indulgent variation on familiar themes.

A bend in the road and how it leads to native title controlling how work patterns flow etc etc. 

If Winu clears the huge hurdles to become a mine then Rio will have to apply for a Mining license at some point in time.  Putting a new road somewhere on that will be part of a larger process. 

Major highways have been re-located after a mineral deposit has reached the mining stage - Hemlo in Canada is one from memory - Transcanada Highway ran over 15+M oz Au deposit(s).

What is known and speculated about for Winooo.....

If

then the number of drill holes visible and annotated above may be way off.  However,

this statutory report says 30! holes so maybe the image is up to date.   Resolution (pun somewhat intentional once it crossed my mind) is too poor to tell which may be RC or Diamond holes.  Some sumps for diamond holes may be visible.

Combine this with the BF paragraph

and some parameters can be imagined.

Tonnes - Metric tons. [ not short tons or long tons]

The limit of 140m provided for mineralisation combined with the area drilled in the above image would require the grade to push some 4% to come close to the 10Mt contained copper (1 square kilometer at and SG of 2.7 or so by 100+-m thick  ~270Mt if everything is mineralised).

The diamond hole average depth is MATHEMATICALLY ~555m and RC ~182m.  Obviously there will be a range of hole depths.

The RC depth is compatible with 140m below 40+-m of cover.

The diamond depth is not.  So what it means is very open to speculation.  Drilling one or two holes to 500m would make sense from a scoping aspect and then call it quits if there was nothing going on.  12 holes strongly suggests something is going on at depth and this Winu may not be a simple horizontal blanket of supergene mineralisation.

A depth component >140m may compensate for size and grade.

=====

Nature of the deposit(s).  IOCG?  Porphyry? Skarn? Replacement? Other?????

IMO Winu is unlikely to be a Nifty (2Mt contained Cu and counting) style of mineralisation - i.e. basically Cu only.  No real evidence for this so pure speculation.

Rather it may be similar to the Cu/Au Au/Cu plus minus Ag, tungsten, ?cobalt varieties seen at Telfer, Calibre/Magnum, Minyari, Obelisk, probably Havieron and the numerous "teasers" around Telfer.

Telfer, from memory, has a resource and production of some 1Mt of Cu and 30+M oz Au.  Using $6000 per tonne and $1200/ounce Au as metal values for simplistic calculation purposes gives a copper equivalent of "only" 7Mt! 

Would Rio be interested? 

Not 10Mt contained Cu but started from surface and still going at depth although very low grade overall these days apparently.

Greatland Gold

Hole 5 "275m" @ 5.75 g/t Au Eq,      4.77g/t Au and 0.61%Cu          or, using the above $ values, approximately 3.66% Cu Eq if my math is correct.  Such grades tend to be reduced once the resource geologists apply their magic potions to the hard work of the exploration geos.  The practical versus the dreamers the latter tend to be....

Whether these deposits are similar or totally different much more information is needed. Most likely variants on a theme depending on many factors that mean local differences become very important.

Telfer: selective replacement of favourable units such that early terminology used the term reefs but by the mid 80s evidence was being mounted to show mineralisation was introduced rather than forming in situ. [Epigenetic vs Syngenetic]

Havieron has a very distinctive geophysical signature and may be something like a breccia pipe with limited cross section dimensions (<<500x500M but extending to depths in excess of 1Km. 

Possible "shape" analogues are Ridgeway and Carrapateena which may give a clue to possible mining if economics work out.

Winu? 

Anecdotally a formational AEM anomaly suggests a large conductive zone   There is a moderate magnetic response though, again anecdotally, it doesn't coincide with what has been drilled. 

This and whatever else has turned out to be worth spending nearly $10M in 12 months.  Rio's five year commitment is well over $15M on 11,000 square kilometers plus JV expenditures which even for them is not pocket change.

These concepts/ideas flow through to the nearology principles:

Havieron/Winu/Calibre variable geophysical signatures that make them "visible" under cover.  I would doubt Havieron could be detected by AEM at 400+m.

Telfer has minimal magnetic signature but should respond to electromagnetics (IP/AEM) though I have no idea how well.  Someone stubbed their toe on a good outcrop so it is a moot point.  Minyari/WACA has some similarities to Telfer - unfortunately order of magnitude is not one even though it has shaped up quite well over the years under AZY.  Whether other near Telfer deposits will do the same  ....one can hope.

Nifty (Roger Mason pers comm.) is a resistivity anomaly rather than a conductive one.

AZY's recent AEM surveys have some 40 targets

Will be good to see the drills head to the northern ones anomalies 40-42.   Would be interesting to be able to compare to Winu AEM though drilling at Folly/GT/MB probably benefited from Rio personnel who had that knowledge and the results weren't great.   .

No guarantee of success  but

 

Season's Greeting to you to Onceover and may the force be with AZY in 2019.