There was much talk in AMIRA after the major eruption of Puyehue in Chile recently, albeit a little later after the volcanic ash cloud circled the Earth and disrupted the first sponsors meeting for the major new P1060 (Enhanced geochemical targeting in magmatic hydrothermal systems) project. Hasty re-arrangements had to be made over a holiday long weekend in Australia when many sponsors and researchers from other parts of Australia, SE Asia, North America, UK and Chile were suddenly stranded in various places prior to the planned meeting in Hobart.A combined web teleconference was quickly organised with many sponsors and some researchers gathering at AMIRA’s office in Melbourne, with links to other researchers in Hobart and other sponsors in Perth, and elsewhere in Australia and SE Asia. About 40 people still attended the meeting which proved in these circumstances to be a great success.

The P1060 project, following on from the highly successful P765A project, is AMIRA’s biggest pure geoscience project with 21 sponsors providing funding of over A$3.5 million. Together with in-kind research funding and planned grant applications, financial leverage for individual sponsors is between 40 and 60 to 1. The research is being conducted by the CODES Centre of Excellence at the University of Tasmania under the leadership of Professors David Cooke and Bruce Gemmell, with key support from Lakehead University in Canada and Imperial College in London.

The sponsors are Anglo American, AngloGold, Barrick, BHP Billiton, Buenaventura, Codelco, Eldorado, First Quantum, Freeport, Gold Fields, G-Resources, Inmet, Intrepid, Lundin, MMG, Newcrest, Newmont, Rio Tinto, Teck, Vale and Xstrata Copper. There are only three sponsorship positions available before full funding is declared and no further sponsors can join the project.

Nominated case study sites include Grasberg, Bingham, Resolution, Pascua-Veladero, Cobre Panama, Cerro Colorado, Tantahuatay, La Zanja, Haquira, La Colosa, Santo Thomas and Quimsacocha. Together with those deposits already studied in P765A such as Batu Hijau, Lepanto, Baguio, Martabe, Taldy Bulak, Collahuasi, El Teniente, Yanacocha, Cerro Casale, Timok, Chelopech and others, these provide a phenomenal coverage of some of the world’s major deposits and hopefully allow a continuation of building practical and very effective tools for the exploration of large hydrothermal systems.

Why is this project of value to sponsors?

1. It offers increasingly proven mineral chemistry techniques for both green rocks and lithocap systems associated with a major search target of interest to many companies
2. It allows quicker and value-saving (reduced drilling) location of the key part of large hydrothermal systems plus a reduced chance of management fatigue by potentially faster discovery. In addition, lithocaps have proved notoriously difficult for gold explorers to effectively deal with in the past.
3. It is very suitable for poorly exposed systems in deserts and forests, or for those under cover with limited available deep drilling (a key result in P765A was the accurate prediction of the exact location of Resolution under 1000m of cover in Arizona)
4. The key minerals can be identified in the field by local geologists
5. Fertility indicators are encouraging and may allow better initial selection of belts or properties
6. The testing in “unknown” real-life situations (blind tests) has proved extremely popular and successful with sponsors in P765A and will be continued in P1060.

For further information contact Alan Goode, ([email protected]) at AMIRA