Commander Resources drills 0.24% CuEq over 50 metres at Burn, British Columbia
Commander Resources Ltd. [CMD-TSXV] has received results for its inaugural drill program at the Burn copper and gold porphyry project located 100 km north of Smithers, British Columbia. Freeport-McMoRan Mineral Properties Canada Inc. is earning into the Burn Property and Commander is the operator. Commander completed four drill holes totaling 1,513 metres from three drill sites in October 2022.
Highlights: Burn represents a new greenfields porphyry copper and gold discovery; 1,513-metre inaugural drill program. Area tested includes a large, exposed, quartz-magnetite stockwork zone, a chargeability (induced polarization) anomaly and a zone of elevated gold in soils.
Hole BU22-01 returned 50 metres of 0.11% copper and 0.20 g/t gold (0.24% CuEq). Hole BU22-02 returned 83.5 metres grading 1.08 g/t gold. Targets are open in all directions as well as additional untested areas.
Drill hole BU 22-01 encountered two intervals of copper-bearing intrusive including an interval of 50 metres grading 0.11% copper and 0.20 g/t gold (0.24% CuEq) starting at 84 metres downhole and a gold dominant interval in hole BU22-02 from 4.5 metres of 83.5 metres grading 1.08 g/t gold. The Burn Property, which covers 17,675 ha was acquired directly by Commander in 2018 to cover prominent gossans exposed along ridges. The property has seen limited historical exploration and this is the first time the property has been drill tested.
Robert Cameron, President and CEO, stated, “We are very excited with these promising inaugural drill results from the Burn project. This is brand new grassroots copper and gold discovery in a well-established porphyry copper and gold district. It was acquired directly by Commander following a regional data compilation and a single day of ground prospecting, which is a testament to the strength and expertise of our technical team. Our partner, Freeport-McMoRan, recognized the potential and partnered with us at an early stage funding the systematic evaluation of this large tenure package that has culminated in this drill discovery.”
The Burn Property is located within the Babine Porphyry belt 70 km north of two past producing mines at Bell and Granisle. Initial work at Burn in 2018 identified widespread phyllic-style alteration with trace amounts of chalcopyrite.
Compilation of drill results is ongoing. The company has engaged Condor Consulting to reprocess and refine the airborne magnetic data and to complete parametric magnetic inversions or modelling of the central zone area to guide follow-up drilling. The scale of the follow-up drill program in 2023 is currently being determined but will include follow-up step-outs from the high gold zone encountered in hole BU22-02 and testing of similar magnetic features to those encountered in hole BU22-01.
Freeport has been granted the right to earn up to a 75 % interest in the Burn Property through staged option payments and work expenditures totaling $2,500,000 in exploration expenditures and $560,000 in payments to Commander. Following which the companies would enter a 75% Freeport/25% Commander Joint Venture. On October 6, 2022, the Burn property was expanded by optioning a 100% interest in a seven mineral tenure cells (127 ha.) from private vendors for aggregate payments of $290,000.