Strong Leached Cap Drilled In Porphyry At Big Sandy

VANCOUVER - Bell Copper Corporation has drilled a strongly altered and veined hematitic leached capping hosted by quartz porphyry at its Big Sandy project. Big Sandy is a large, truncated porphyry copper-molybdenum target located in northwestern Arizona, approximately 30 kilometers south of the Perseverance Project.

Drillhole BS-3, which was oriented to test a 2400 meter by 2100 meter area of high electrical conductivity that was detected in an earlier magnetotelluric survey, entered the mineralized quartz porphyry beginning at an inclined depth of 1192 meters, immediately beneath cemented gravel cover rocks. The true thickness of the gravel layers penetrated by BS-3 at an oblique angle is estimated to be 860 meters.

BS-3 encountered strongly altered and veined hematitic leached capping, consisting of seal-brown-colored, earthy-textured hematite filling fractures and pervading the strongly sericitized groundmass of the quartz porphyry host rock. Stockwork-style to sheeted-style quartz veinlets and sericite-enveloped "D-veins" constitute a significant volume of the core, along with minor amounts of hydrothermal and structural breccia. To date, a 92-meter interval of this type of rock has been cut in BS-3, extending to the current bottom of the hole at a depth of 1284 meters. Drilling at BS-3 was suspended over the Christmas holiday and has now resumed.

Oriented core collected near the base of the gravel cover shows that at BS-3 the porphyry system is tilted about 45 degrees from its orientation before faulting. This tilt suggests that any supergene copper blanket that might underlie the hematitic leached capping in BS-3 can be targeted at shallower depth in the direction of drillhole BS-1, located 1200 meters to the east. A 2-meter interval of chalcocite supergene enrichment underlying hematitic leached capping was cut at a depth of 936 meters in BS-1, suggesting continuity of supergene leaching and porphyry-related alteration across a distance of 1200 meters. The intervening ground showed anomalously high electrical conductivity in the August 2020 magnetotelluric survey. A future drillhole is now contemplated to test that shallower target.

"BS-3 finished 2021 in a 90-meter interval of intensely hematitic, quartz-veined, sericitized quartz porphyry. It is exactly what we wanted to see as the first bedrock under gravel cover. All but the bottom 30 meters of the hole are now cased off and protected behind steel. We look forward to revealing what happens at the upcoming oxidation boundary, where any copper oxide and supergene copper sulfide minerals would tend to accumulate."