JUNIOR PNG mineral explorer Canterbury Resources Limited has successfully lodged an Exploration Licence application covering the Idzan Creek and Wamum copper-gold porphyry systems located northwest of the major Wafi-Golpu Project in Morobe Province
Managing director Grant Craighead said the new tenement further strengthens Canterbury’s interests in the region and covers prospects where historic drilling has demonstrated the existence of fertile copper-gold porphyry style mineralisation systems.
Mr Craighead said that once the tenement is granted Canterbury proposes to undertake a major review and re-interpretation of historical data.
This review is expected to generate Golpu style targets suitable for future drill testing.
The Wamum ELA is located immediately northwest of the world-class Wafi-Golpu Project in Morobe Province and is around 70km west of Lae.
The application area covers two known copper-gold porphyry systems, Idzan Creek and Wamum, as well as various other targets outlined by surface geochemistry and geophysics.
Canterbury’s personnel have a long association with exploration in the Morobe Province, with several team members having integral involvement in exploration of the Wafi-Golpu complex, including drilling of the discovery hole at Golpu.
The Wamum ELA is located within the New Guinea Thrust Belt south of the Ramu-Markham fault, which marks the northern limit of the Australian craton and a major suture with an accreted volcanic arc.
It is underlain by the mid-Miocene Maramuni arc plutonic sequences (andesites and porphyry intrusions) overlying Early Miocene clastic sediments. This sequence is gently folded and considered to be at a favourable erosional level for late Miocene porphyry copper-gold systems.
