Anglo American and Xstrata have reported a JORC-compliant initial resource estimate for their West Wall copper project in central Chile’s Valparaíso Region, where each company has a 50% interest in the project operating company, West Wall SCM. The estimated inferred resource for the project’s Lagunillas deposit, based on 57 drill holes (33,600 m), totals 750 million mt at a grade of 0.54% copper and 0.01% molybdenum, containing 4 million mt of copper using a 0.3% copper cut-off grade. The resource also contains estimated average gold grades of 0.05 g/mt.
The West Wall project is located 100 km northeast of Santiago and 70 km north of the Rio Blanco-Los Bronces mineral district. Porphyry copper style hydrothermal alteration covers a large area of approximately 7 km by 3 km. Exploration activities have focused on the south of the prospect at Lagunillas, where drilling has outlined copper sulphide resources associated with porphyry intrusive bodies.
(www.angloamerican.com and www.xstrata.com)
