1/ .@BellCopperBCU has a great exploration story at Kabba. See my thoughts on the #copper play in Arizona here: ceo.ca/@Newton/a-loom…
2/ The roots of the porphyry system are exposed at surface approximately 8 kilometers west of their exploration area and the top of the system was split from the roots by a fault.
3/ The deposit of interest is concentrated in the top of the system and it was either moved downwards and preserved under the valley, or moved up and eroded away.
4/ It's a simple story, but the devil is in the details. Thankfully, Bell Copper has a technical team that understands the details and is taking a scientific approach to exploration.
5/ That is particularly important for copper exploration in Arizona since the State has produced such a large amount of copper historically (10% of all copper ever mined in the history of the world?!) that most prospects have been picked over many times.
6/ Kabba itself has been drilled since the 1950s, but past programs drilled down into roots of the system and found they were not mineralized. That is to be expected based on current models of porphyries, but was surely a troubling surprise for the exploration geologists of...
7/ ...the past. Who would have thought that rock they were looking for had been displaced approximately 8 kilometers to east and buried under a mountain of gravel?
8/ The valleys in Arizona are typically very smooth at surface, but Tim told me that they can have as much relief at bedrock as is seen in the nearby mountains! What's more, the gravel cover can be relatively thin.
9/ Kabba had enough features of interest to keep people working on it for decades, but recent developments in the understanding of porphyries and local geology has put Bell Copper in a good position to finally find the upper part of this system.
10/ Watch for cross sections from the most recent round of drilling if they hit significant copper to see just how deep we are talking about here.
11/ I asked Tim why he has stuck with this project for so long – why does he think this porphyry is mineralized?
12/ He said, "Any time I lose faith, I get back on the footwall and look at those veins. The volume of fluid required to produce that much chemical change in rock is impressive and I'm gonna find this thing if it's the last thing I do…" $BCU.V
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