The Paterson Copper-Gold Project comprises a ~1,200 square kilometre strategic landholding within the highly-prospective Paterson Province in north-western Western Australia, which boasts a number of large-scale mining operations including Newcrest’s (ASX: NCM) world-class 28Moz Telfer gold-copper mine and Metal X’s (ASX: MLX) Nifty copper mine.
Firefly’s extensive Paterson landholding includes tenements in the north of the Paterson Province around Antipa Resources’ (ASX: AZY) Citadel Project (being explored under JV with Rio Tinto); to the north and east of the Cameco Australia’s Kintyre uranium deposit; as well as an area to the south of the Rudall River National Park that contains the same stratigraphic hosts as the Nifty and Kintyre deposits.
Firefly’s aim in establishing this large tenement package was to secure a favourable geological position primarily over existing historical copper-gold prospects around the Kintyre uranium mine, particularly the Wanderer copper-gold-molybdenum prospect. Historical drilling at Wanderer during the 1980’s returned primary copper grades up to 6.5%, gold grades up to 1g/t and molybdenum up to 700ppm, less than 100 metres from surface, which have never been followed up.
An integration of available historical geophysical datasets has created a large high-resolution geophysical data package over the primary tenement application containing the Wanderer prospect. This modern dataset illustrates significant structural information, strongly supports Firefly’s geological model for potential intrusive copper-gold sources for Wanderer and multiple nearby prospects and has led to the development of several other high-priority drill targets across the application area.
