Rockfire Resources plc (LON: ROCK), the Queensland copper and gold-focused resource company, announces that a decision has been made by the Minister for Mining in Papua New Guinea not to renew the Company’s Nakru licence (EL1462).
This licence, which has been under ministerial review since September 2017, was the only licence retained in PNG by the Company. In reaching this conclusion, the Minister noted that the Company has held the tenement for five renewal periods (since 2012) but no resources have been identified. In accordance with its strategy, Rockfire will continue to focus on its 100%-owned, large-scale and highly promising Australian gold and copper projects in Queensland.
Chief Executive Officer of Rockfire, David Price commented:
“Today’s announcement signifies the Group’s exit from Papua New Guinea, a process which began almost two years ago under the direction of the then-new management team, with the objective of focusing on more favourable jurisdictions and prospects that, the directors believe, can be more readily advanced to a JORC resource. This has recently been supported by our maiden gold resource at Lighthouse in Queensland, something we also plan to achieve at our Copperhead Project, also in Queensland.”
“Copperhead is a coherent and sizable surface copper anomaly 3km x 2km in area. Five diamond drill holes from drilling in 1972 encountered visible copper and molybdenum minerals throughout their lengths, including two holes which were 300m long. Results of all samples collected throughout the 5 drill holes average 0.35% copper equivalent. Potentially, Copperhead hosts a minimum of 300m of continuous copper mineralisation, with all holes terminating with visible copper minerals still present.”
“Copper Dome, also in Queensland, is a porphyry copper project with previous drilling results including 15m @ 0.88% Cu (including 4.5m @ 2.28% Cu), 12m @ 0.61% Cu (including 3m @ 1.24% Cu) and 51m @ 0.20g/t gold.”
“Rockfire is preparing for its maiden drilling program at Copperhead and management is excited to be testing such a large-scale target. The market will be informed once drilling commences.”
