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PERSEVERANCE PROJECT

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"PERSEVERANCE Represents an Extraordinary Opportunity for Discovery of an Outsized High Grade Copper Porphyry Deposit in Arizona."

OVERVIEW

 

Bell Copper has been pursuing the faulted-off top of a major porphyry copper system, the bottom of which is exposed in the foothills west of the Company's property.

 

The Perseverance project is located in northwestern Arizona, approximately 19 miles southeast of Kingman and 150 miles northwest of Phoenix. The land package comprises a total of 13,000+ acres 5244 hectares).

 

Perseverance lies on the Arizona Volcanic Arc. Along this mineralized trend Freeport McMoRan is currently producing over 200 million pounds of copper annually from the Bagdad mine, Origin Mining has the capacity to produce 30 million pounds of copper annually from the Mineral Park mine, and Rio Tinto has demonstrated an inferred resource of 1.95 billion tonnes containing +1.51 per cent copper and 0.035 per cent molybdenum at Resolution. This recent discovery of the giant Resolution orebody serves as a reminder that undiscovered porphyry copper deposits still exist in Arizona and that they are worth finding.

 

On Aug 27 2018, Bell Copper entered into an agreement with Cordoba Minerals whereby Cordoba can earn up to an 80% interest in the Kabba project by completing certain phased financial commitments and project expenditures over a 7.5-year period. 

 

 

HISTORY OF PERSEVERANCE​

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Just beyond the western edge of the Perseverance prospect, where the Hualapai Mountains rise above valley-filling sand and gravel, a very large Laramide-age porphyry Mo/Cu deposit crops out. This porphyry intrusion, measuring 12 miles long by 1.5 miles wide, has been thoroughly explored by the likes of Bear Creek Exploration Company, Union Carbide Corporation, AMAX, Cerromin, Conoco, Hanna, Kerr-McGee, Santa Fe, and Noranda. The efforts of these companies demonstrated the intense alteration, quartz veining, and highly anomalous molybdenum and copper contents typical of major porphyry copper deposits, but the basis for a money-making mining operation was never established.

 

The known, outcropping parts of this porphyry copper system appear to be an exposure of a deep level of the original porphyry system, deeper than where the richest deposits of copper would be expected. A major fault located on the west edge of the Perseverance prospect separates this deep porphyry exposure from a down-dropped block that may contain the richer copper-bearing parts of this porphyry system, directly underneath the Perseverance prospect. A 1974 Master's thesis by John Vuich, studying under John Guilbert at the University of Arizona, surmised that the richer top of the deposit was most likely still present in the subsurface east of the outcropping part. During the 1960's - 1970's, the major mining companies focused on exploring near-surface deposits, and the idea slowly sunk below the radar screens of the big Arizona mining companies...

 

In 1997 Dr Marsh stood on this exposed root zone, and looking to the NE, said to himself "the top of this thing must be out there..."

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  • MAY- Drill Hole K-11                                        
  • Cut approx. 900 meters of altered & mineralized porphyry interpreted to be pyritic shell                                                  
  • Intercepted 14 meters of supergene chalcocite blanket                                       
  • Short interval near 1185 meters depth characterized by bornite-digenite copper  minerals, closely associated with pyrite      

2018 DRILLING

 

Bell Copper returned to the Perseverance project for further core drilling of K-20 in September of 2018. This drilling was focused on the Company's ovoid copper porphyry target originally identified in 2016 after completion of drillhole K-12. 

 

Observations of mineralization and geological structures encountered by drill hole K-20 suggest close proximity to a potential Laramide copper porphyry deposit. Beginning at a depth of approximately 300 metres to 1319 metres, K-20 passed through a long interval of intermediate sulfidation state veins (pyrite-sphalerite-tennantite-chalcopyrite-galena-ankerite), indicating a consistent position on the fringe of a large porphyry copper system.                                    

 

At approximately 1,030 metres deep, the drill core became more potassically altered with disseminated pyrite, chalcopyrite on a 1:1 ratio, with more frequent veins and quartz-molybdenite stringers. This was observed with an occurrence of hydrothermal magnetite filling fractures and veins and secondary biotite alteration. The appearance of potassic alteration with more frequent veins and quartz stringers suggests that K-20 is approaching the higher temperature region of the porphyry system. The presence of chalcopyrite, bornite and chalcocite in drill core, suggest potential for a hypogene enrichment zone with higher-than-average copper grades.

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K-20 drilling between 1030 metres and 1319 metres continued to encounter anomalous copper minerals comprising chalcopyrite, bornite, and chalcocite along with scattered molybdenite.  Locally abundant milky quartz veins were seen, some carrying magnetite and virtually indistinguishable from quartz-magnetite veins in the footwall outcrops. 

 

Worth noting, a 30-centimeter-wide carbonatite dike, comprising calcite, apatite, biotite, and primary magnetite and carrying 0.3% of the combined rare earth elements cerium and lanthanum along with anomalous copper, was cut at a depth of 1108 metres.  The carbonatite dike was haloed by fenite (K-feldspar) alteration resembling the K-feldspar envelopes surrounding chalcopyrite-pyrite veinlets elsewhere in K-20. 

 

Globally, carbonatites and porphyry copper deposits are not found together, so their occurrence together at Perseverance is enigma.

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MAGNETO-TELLURIC SURVEY

In early 2020, Quantec Geoscience was contracted (see news release dated January 20, 2020) to conduct a Spartan Magneto-telluric (“MT”) survey over the Perseverance project area to extend a previous Quantec Titan MT survey conducted in 2017 for a previous JV operator. The previous Titan survey indicated a deep 50 ohm-m conductor trending NE towards the K-20 drill hole (refer to news release dated May 21, 2019). With the combination of the trending deep MT anomaly and the 595 meters of anomalous copper in K-20, Bell Copper believed a porphyry centre could lie to the NE of K-20. Quantec had surveyed 52 sites spaced approximately on 500 meter centers when the survey was suspended due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the full extent of the planned survey was never completed, the smaller survey covering 16 square km succeeded in defining two low resistivity anomalies of less than 10 ohm-m - comparable to the giant, high-grade Resolution porphyry copper deposit near Superior, Arizona

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CURRENT DRILLING PROGRAM

Diamond drilling to test the Northern MT Anomaly commenced in late October 2021 with a planned initial 2-hole program to test the Northern MT anomaly. With positive results, additional holes are planned to delineate the extent of the MT feature. Drilling on the Eastern anomaly will be predicated on the success of the Northern program.


 

Shots from PERSEVERANCE

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