Excellent intercepts at Mount Oxide

Perilya Limited has announced further significant results from recent drilling at....

  Perilya Limited has announced further significant results from recent drilling at its Mount Oxide copper project in Queensland, Australia.Highlights from the drilling program included drill hole MOXD59, which intersected 171m at 1.0% copper from 111m downhole, including 26.6m at 1.7% copper and 18m at 2.6% copper on the northern margin of the current resource. Drill hole MOXD62 intersected 80m @ 0.8% copper that includes 28m at 1.8% copper from 23m down hole, north of the current resource, while drilling further north of the existing resource continued to intersect visible copper mineralisation.Perilya Chief Executive Officer, Len Jubber said this was an exciting result that highlighted the potential of the current drilling program to increase the inferred resource to 250,000 – 300,000 tonnes of copper.“Our confidence in what is likely to initially be an open cut mining project is increasing with each drill hole,” Mr Jubber said.The Mount Oxide project is located in the Mount Isa region western succession, which includes major sediment hosted breccia copper deposits and uranium mineralisation. The deposit is a chalcocite-dominated system associated with strong silica-hematite alteration and copper mineralisation developed on the margins of the hematite core. The mineralisation is hosted in a sedimentary package associated with a strong structural control along the northeast trending Mount Oxide fault and cross cutting faults.The current Mount Oxide resource—4 million tonnes at 2.8% copper—is 112,000 tonnes of contained copper.Drilling this field season has focused on testing extensions to the current resource model, with two rigs drilling to the north of the current resource. However, Perilya said that drilling had been hindered by the steep terrain and drill holes are being targeted across outcropping mineralisation, mineralised structures and a silica-hematite breccia.The company said the objective of the current drilling program, scheduled for completion in December, is to gain an understanding of the potential scale of the deposit. The company has already commenced preparation for a resource infill and extension drilling program in 2008.