Alderan Resources Limited (ASX: AL8) is a USA focused copper and gold explorer. Its portfolio consists of three high quality exploration projects, Detroit, Frisco and White Mountain, in Utah, USA.
Alderan's flagship Detroit project has strong potential for Carlin-like gold deposits. Following tenement consolidation, first pass exploration involving geological mapping, stream, rock and soil sampling, magnetic and induced polarisation geophysical surveying plus anomaly drill testing, Alderan’s focus is on gold deposits which can be rapidly progressed to resource estimation and mining.
Alderan has 6.5km of prospective geology at Detroit which hosts two known oxide gold deposits, Drum and Mizpah, plus two unexplored high order gold in soil anomalies, Midway and Basin Main. Drum heap leach gold mine operated between 1984-89 producing ~125,000oz gold from high grade oxide ore grading ~1.2g/t. Mizpah, which lies 2km north of Drum, was drilled but never mined despite gold mineralisation occurring from surface. Both deposits are open down dip and neither have been explored for primary mineralisation.
Drum’s historical drill hole samples grade up to 38.8g/t Au and Mizpah’s to 9.1g/t Au. Historical drill hole intersections at Drum include 18.3m @ 7.7g/t Au within 35.1m @ 4.3g/t Au and at Mizpah, 7.6m @ 2.3g/t Au from surface.
Alderan successfully completed drilling programmes at Drum and Mizpah in 2022 with the aim of confirming near surface gold mineralisation. The holes at Drum intersected +1.0g/t oxide gold mineralisation consistent with historical holes drilled during the 1980s. Alderan’s Drum intersections included 17.8m grading 1.7g/t Au while at Mizpah results to date highlight 4.5-12.2m mineralised intersections grading 1.5-1.8g/t Au within thicker zones of up to 42m grading 0.5-1.0g/t Au with mineralisation from surface. Alderan's next step is drilling to enable resource estimations.
At Alderan’s Frisco project, Kennecott Exploration (KEX; Rio Tinto company) is exploring for porphyry copper deposits under an option agreement. There are numerous historical mines throughout the project area including Cactus (breccia hosted copper-gold-silver), Imperial (skarn hosted copper-zinc) and Horn Silver (high-grade lead-zinc-silver).
KEX and Alderan drilling at Cactus includes intersections of 41m @ 1.9% Cu, 0.62g/t Au and 32m @ 1.2% Cu, 0.3g/t Au in tourmaline breccias while at Accrington intersections include 54m @ 1.4% Cu, 0.2g/t Au. KEX has recently completed drilling at Copper Gulch which is a 1,500m by 500m magnetic and copper geochemistry anomaly approximately 500m southwest of Cactus.
White Mountain is an early-stage project with classic epithermal gold indicators.
Short Company Bio: Alderan Resources Limited (ASX: “AL8”) is a USA focused copper and gold explorer with a portfolio of high-quality projects in Utah, USA. Alderan's drilling at its flagship Detroit project has confirmed significant potential for oxide gold deposits at Drum Mine and Mizpah which were last explored in the 1980s.
