AusAmerican hits wide high-grade massive sulphides at Blue Bell

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THE DRILL SERGEANT: Australian-American Mining Corporation (ASX: AIW) has been heartened by further encouraging results from the maiden drilling program at the company’s Blue Bell project in Arizona.

Recent results from the drilling campaign at Blue Bell have returned multiple high-grade copper-gold-silver intersections, including:

–    17 metres at 4.6 per cent copper equivalent (CuEq) (3.3 per cent copper, 1.3 grams per tonne gold and 31.2 grams per tonne silver) from 216 metres;
 
–    17m at 1.3 per cent CuEq (1 per cent copper, 0.2g/t gold and 9.9g/t silver) from 192m;

–    15m at 2.2 per cent CuEq (1.9 per cent copper, 0.2g/t gold and 11.0g/t silver) from 213m; and

–    10m at 0.9 per cent CuEq (0.6 per cent copper, 0.2g/t gold and 11.9g/t silver) from 252m.

The drilling returned a number of broad high-grade intersections including:

–    9m at 6 per cent CuEq (4.5 per cent copper, 1.1g/t gold and 43.6g/t silver) from 216m; and
 
–    3m at 5.1 per cent CuEq (4.5 per cent copper, 0.4g/t gold and 22.6g/t silver) from 218m.

AusAmerican explained the latest drill holes were conducted to test an area which has not previously undergone any significant mining activity.

 

Q1 2013 Blue Bell drill hole plan. Source: Company announcement

The drilling has demonstrated mineralisation remains open at depth and along strike with results from 15 of 17 holes received so far intersecting mineralisation.

“These positive Phase 1 drill results validate our brownfield exploration strategy, provide further evidence that there is significant and relatively shallow high grade mineralisation remaining at Blue Bell, and confirms that previous mining activity in the 1920’s did not identify all of the high-grade lenses,” AusAmerican managing director Richard Holmes said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

The initial drilling program, which finished earlier this month, consisted of 26 holes for approximately 5,000 metres of RC drilling.

The company said it expects to receive the remaining results in May.