We have found the copper at Lion.
The palladium, the platinum, the gold and the silver are all sitting in there with it.
We have not found the nickel.
That is not a complaint. It is a clue.
In a magmatic sulphide system the molten sulphide cools in a set order. The nickel rich material crystallises first. What is left behind gets progressively richer in copper, platinum, palladium, gold and silver, and that leftover liquid is the mobile one. It travels furthest from where it started.
Lion looks like the material that travelled. Copper and precious metals, with only minor nickel and cobalt, and the highest palladium grades sitting inside massive copper sulphide.
Which leaves a fair question. If Lion is what moved, where is what stayed?
We do not know yet. It should be somewhere in that system. We have not found it.
The long section in yesterday's release shows the other half of this. Our model runs from surface to about 600 metres vertical depth and stops. It stops because that is where the drilling in the estimate stopped.
Underneath it there is a geophysical conductor plate. We have put holes into that ground since the April cut off date, at 765 and 890 metres, and they intersected visible copper. Assays are pending.
I am not going to tell you what those holes will return, because I do not know. But we like what we see 😎
Five rigs are turning. Assays on Lion Deep are expected by the end of September.