Business
Copper-Gold Project, New Mexi
Copper-Gold Project, New Mexi.
About this update from Zephyr Energy Plc
[{"type":"text","content":"\n RNS Number : 2926C Vane Minerals PLC 11 November 2009 \n \n11 November 2009\n\nVANE Minerals plc (AIM:VML)\n('VANE' or the 'Company')\n\nCopper-Gold Porphyry Project, New Mexico, USA\nProperty package established from the Freeport data base, comprising:\n\n\n49 federal lode mining claims and 640 acre New Mexico State Lease \n\n\n1,650 acres within the Banner Mineral District, New Mexico \n\n\nLordsburg West : undrilled covered area target \n\n\n\nVANE announces that its wholly-owned subsidiary, AVEN Associates LLC, has established a land package within the Banner Mineral District of southwestern New Mexico, covering approximately 1,650 acres, about 2.5 square miles. The land package, 100% owned by AVEN Associates LLC, consists of 49 federal lode mining claims and a 640 acre New Mexico State Lease and lies to the west of the productive copper-gold Banner Mine. \nThe target, Lordsburg West, is an undrilled covered area adjacent to the productive Banner Mine. The Banner Mine, an underground copper/gold vein that operated into the 1960's produced 4.3 million tons of ore averaging 2.3% copper, 0.055 opt gold and 1.5 opt silver (Briggs, 1994). The Banner Mineral District has many of the geologic characteristics typically associated with the outer margins of a porphyry copper system. VANE believes the wide distribution of recent cover rocks in this area has left portions of this target untested. The southwest porphyry copper province that includes southern Arizona and southeastern New Mexico accounts for over 60% of U.S. copper production. Examination of the geologic maps of Arizona and New Mexico reveals that about 70% of the copper province is obscured by younger alluvial and/or volcanic rocks that were deposited after the copper deposits formed some 58 to 62 million years ago. Geologically, the density of porphyry copper occurrences should be the same throughout the province whether they occur in outcropping pre-mineral rocks or beneath post-mineral rocks. Plans are to drill up to 10, 500-foot rotary holes, with spot cores which is expected to be completed by the end of 2009.\nThe porphyry copper exper...