The 14,000 hectare Caborca project is located south of the town of Caborca.
The city is the regional business and population centre for northwest Sonora State. Highways, electrical power and waterlines cross through the holdings, and railhead is within 10 km of the holdings.
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The Lista Blanca zone is a sub-vertical, tabular zone of replacement mineralization hosted by Cambrian aged conglomerate along its fault contact with limestone. The fault was a conduit for the mineralizing fluids so that higher grades are generally expected to be located adjacent to the fault. The replacement zone can be traced for 1.7 km of strike and remains open on-trend, has a surface vertical extent of up to 80 meters above the valley floor. Thickness ranges from 15 to nearly 100 meters.
A 1964 report written by Mexican government agency Consejo de Recursos Minerales indicates that in the 1950s over 500 meters of underground and open-cut workings were developed on the Lista Blanca zone in an attempt to produce copper using a 300-ton per day flotation plant. That production attempt failed because the system could not recover copper from the oxidized mineralization. The report further indicates that 15,000 tonnes grading 3.6% copper were direct shipped from Lista Blanca, and estimated a possible resource of 520,000 tonnes grading about 2% copper in the workings area. This estimate is a historical reference only that does not comply with nor conform to the requirements of NI 43-101, and Pediment does not in any way consider it a valid resource estimate.
Initial work by Pediment included partially mapping surface exposures of the zone and collecting 35 reconnaissance rock samples, including several from old dumps. Surface exposures show leaching of copper, so most effective sampling to estimate grades can only be done where old workings expose mineralization below surface. Copper near surface is largely in the secondary mineral chrysocolla that typically exhibits favorable metallurgy leach characteristics. Copper sampling results varied from trace in the leached capping to 3.59%; 13 of the 35 samples returned +1% copper. Gold analysis varied from trace to 3.87 g/t gold. In a 120 metre long section of the zone southeast of the main workings a total of nine samples also returned a mean average 1.42 g/t gold.
Joint Venture Partner
On November 30, 2006, the Company signed an agreement with Inmet Mining Corp. allowing Inmet to explore for copper gold porphyry deposits on Pediment's Caborca project. Pediment has granted Inmet an option to earn up to 70% of the Caborca copper project in return for payments of $250,000 and exploration expenditures of $5,000,000 over four years. (For more information on the agreement please refer to the news release dated December 04, 2006).
Exploration Update
From July 30 to October 2007, exploration work was carried out within the Inmet joint venture Project, including a induced-polarization geophysical and a diamond-drill program. The objective of this work was to further refine geophysical targets in the valley area, create drill targets and evaluate them. However, since testing of these targets didn't show favorable results in locating porphyry copper-gold mineralization, plans are being made to reduce or eliminate the large concession of the joint venture.
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Pitalla Concession Geology & Sample Locations |
Martha Concession Geology & Sample Locations |
Project Map |
Lista Blanca Zone old adit |
View of the dumps on Lista Blanca Ridge |
Lista Blanca Zone Looking South |