Minotaur confident of copper

THE long drought for the next big copper strike might soon be broken in northwest Queensland if intersections of promising zones of copper mineralisation near Cloncurry prove extensive.

Explorer Minotaur has launched drilling at a target called Jericho as part of its Eloise project target near the Eloise copper gold mine, 55km southeast of Cloncurry.

Results so far support earlier electrical geophysical data indicating the presence of ore bodies under 100m of overburden.

“The result is quite exciting. We have found exactly what we wanted to see,” Minotaur managing director Andrew Woskett said.

“Visually, what we see is very exciting and very encouraging. There’s lots of bright yellow. That’s copper. ( But) at the end of the day it’s about grade. We won’t know what the grade is until the assay comes back in about 10 days. That will be the proof of the pudding.”

Minotaur has been conducting electrical geophysical surveys at Jericho with multiple readings from conductors showing a strike length of up to 4km and depth potential from 100m to 700m below the surface.

Initial drilling has intersected these conductors with cores returning copper sulphides about 200m down, two zones of copper sulphides 4.4m and 7.2m wide about 450m down and more sulphides from about 700m.

Probes will be lowered into the holes to undertake further electromagnetic tests.

The Jericho target is about 5km from the underground Eloise coppergold mine, which has been a very productive and high grade copper mine for about 20 years and now is mining at depths of 1400m below the surface.