Northisle Copper and Gold Inc. has completed test drilling on the North Island.
The mining company tested six holes in their Hushamu and Redog Projects, located approximately 15-40 kilometres southwest of Port Hardy near the old Island Copper Mine.
“To be absolutely sure how much copper comes back we have to wait for the analysis,” said Northisle President Jack McClintock. “But it’s all looking very encouraging.”
Core samples from the test drilling have been sent to BVL Minerals’ laboratory in Vancouver. McClintock confirmed they expect to receive the results from the analysis between August 15 and 25.
“If the results are positive, we’ll go back and do some infill drilling,” said McClintock, adding “we would have to drill 24 more holes at 8,000 metres of drilling.”
The test drilling focused on three primary areas. The first area of focus was to test the southeastern extension of the Hushamu deposit.
“The mineralization looks similar to the main deposit, which is good news,” explained McClintock.
The second focus was testing a 300-metre area within the Hushumu deposit, where widely spaced vertical historical drill holes previously indicated very low-grade or no mineralization was present.
McClintock said it now “looks like there is mineralization between the dykes at the historical holes.”
The third area of focus, a test drilling hole at the Red Dog resource, did not go according to plan.
“At Red Dog, we didn’t get down deep enough,” McClintock said, adding “we will have to go back and try again next year - what happened was the driller lost the hold and we collided into broken rock, so the top part of the hole became unstable and they couldn’t drill any deeper.”
Despite the frustration at Red Dog, McClintock said Northisle is still on schedule.
They expect their Preliminary Economic Assessment, which is an engineering study that gives an indication of the potential economic outcome of a project, to be ready at the end of August.