Kodiak Copper is aiming to expand the resource at its MPD copper-gold project in southern British Columbia by March, chief executive Claudia Tornquist told The Northern Miner. The company’s planned 16,500-metre drilling programme is intended to demonstrate growth potential across MPD’s seven deposits, while also testing additional exploration targets. The resource target therefore sits alongside a broader effort to assess the property’s exploration potential.
At the Ketchan deposit, a recent hole intersected 283.5 metres averaging 0.56% copper and 0.15 gram of gold per tonne, beginning at a downhole depth of 37.5 metres. According to the company’s results reported on 9 September and cited by The Northern Miner, the hole addressed a gap in the existing resource model. That result forms part of Kodiak’s work to establish how much larger the MPD resource could become.
Tornquist said the company was giving particular attention to mineralisation close to surface and to higher-grade material. Speaking to The Northern Miner at the Precious Metals Summit in Beaver Creek, Colorado, she linked those priorities to the project’s eventual economic evaluation. Her comments set out a focus on the characteristics of the mineralisation as well as the overall size of the resource Kodiak hopes to establish.
The task for Kodiak is to demonstrate both sufficient scale and grade to support a conceptual starter mine, the outlet reported. Resource expansion is therefore only one part of the work described: the drilling programme also seeks to assess the material that could underpin that concept. The report presents the starter mine as conceptual, rather than an established development plan.
MPD’s seven deposits and the additional exploration targets provide the scope for the planned programme. Tornquist’s March objective concerns a larger resource; the report gives no corresponding timetable for an economic evaluation.