Pacific Ridge Exploration drills 0.45% CuEq over 19 metres at RDP project, British Columbia
Pacific Ridge Exploration Ltd. [TSXV-PEX; OTCQB-PEXZF; FSE-PQWN] reported results from this year’s diamond drill campaign at the RDP copper-gold project, located in northcentral British Columbia, 40 km west of the company’s flagship Kliyul copper-gold project. Antofagasta Minerals S.A., a wholly owned subsidiary of Antofagasta PLC [LSE-ANTO], can earn a 75% interest in RDP by spending $10,000,000 on exploration over eight years and delivering a preliminary economic assessment report. Pacific Ridge is the operator and supported the diamond drill program from Kliyul camp.
The 2023 diamond drilling program at RDP totaled 1,428 metres in three drill holes (RDP-23-007 to RDP-23-009) and tested the Day target and the Bird target. Two drill holes were completed at Day (RDP-23-007 and RDP-23-008) where drill hole RDP-22-005 returned 107.2 metres of 1.39% copper equivalent (CuEq) or 2.06 g/t gold equivalent (AuEq) (0.63% copper, 1.10 g/t gold, and 2.91 g/t silver) within 497.2 metres of 0.66% CuEq or 0.97 g/t AuEq (0.37% copper, 0.40 g/t gold, and 1.60 g/t silver.
The two holes completed at Day were large step-outs over 300 metres northeast and northwest from the collar location for RDP-22-005. In addition, a single diamond drill hole tested Bird (RDP-23-009), located approximately 2.0 km north of Day, where Pacific Ridge discovered porphyry copper-gold mineralization in a stream cutbank in 2022.
Highlights: Drill hole RDP-23-007 at Day ended in strong porphyry copper-gold mineralization: 19.0 metres of 0.45% CuEq or 0.67 g/t AuEq (0.32% copper, 0.19 g/t gold, and 1.08 g/t silver).
The dimensions of Day are now ~290 metres east-west, ~100 metres north-south, and up to ~600 metres vertical depth. It remains open to the east and west, and at depth.
Drill hole RDP-23-009 was the first diamond drill hole to test Bird at depth and returned 18.5 metres of 0.43% CuEq or 0.63 g/t AuEq (0.16% copper, 0.38 g/t gold, and 0.59 g/t silver) within 111.0 meytres at 0.23% CuEq or 0.34 g/t AuEq (0.09% copper, 0.20 g/t gold, and 0.31 g/t silver).
Geochemistry and geophysics suggest that a porphyry core may lie approximately 200 metres deeper than the mineralization intersected in RDP-23-009.
“This year’s diamond drill program at RDP was small but very successful,” said Blaine Monaghan, President and CEO. “In addition to hitting porphyry copper-gold mineralization in large step-out holes at Day we made another porphyry copper-gold discovery at Bird.”
RDP is greater than 10,000 hectares in size and lies within the Stikine Terrane, which is host to numerous significant porphyry deposits in northern British Columbia, including Kemess, Red Chris, Kerr-Sulphurets and Galore Creek. The eastern margin of Stikine Terrane in this part of northcentral BC has been underexplored historically and has seen increased exploration activity since its coverage in the 2017 Geoscience BC Search Phase III airborne magnetic and radiometric survey.
RDP contains several porphyry copper-gold targets (Roy, Day, Porcupine, and Bird) that have been explored intermittently since the early 1970s, including prospecting and mapping, various geochemical surveys, ground- and airborne geophysical surveys, trenching and a limited amount of drilling.