Sora Copper Gold Porphyry Project
100% INTEREST
338 HECTARES under application
DEPARTMENT OF PUNO, SOUTH-EASTERN PERU
Sora is located west of the Santa Lucia mining district and is part of Palamina’s battery metal acquire and hold strategy where drill discovery on neighbouring projects may add significant value.
Drill Discovery Catalyst
In 2023 a series of claims came open within Ivanhoe Electric Inc.’s Pinaya copper gold porphyry project where Palamina was able to stake 500 hectares and will receive title to 338 hectares. Pinaya is 100%-owned by Ivanhoe Electric following the acquisition of Kaizen Discovery Inc. in February 2024. Pinaya has received its DIA (environmental permit approving 40 drill holes) and is awaiting its initiation of activities and water permits. Ivanhoe has newly identified deep Induced Polarization ( I.P. ) anomalies generated from their Typhoon technology. Further drilling is planned to test for a hypogene-enriched porphyry copper system at depth as a possible source of the resource at surface and new regional targets.
Overview, Infrastructure & Geology
The Sora project is located 110 kilometers north-northeast of Arequipa, the second-largest city in Peru. The project is accessible via the all-weather and paved Highway 30B and a series of maintained gravel roads. Palamina has a field office in Juliaca where access to the project is a 2 hour drive by highway.
At Ivanhoe’s Pinaya project a NI 43-101-compliant, open-pit constrained Mineral Resource Estimate (2016) has been defined, outlining a measured and indicated resource of 42 million tonnes grading 0.32% copper and 0.49 grams per tonne of gold and an inferred resource of 40 million tonnes grading 0.36% copper and 0.30 grams per tonne of gold, for 280,000 tonnes of contained copper and 1.03 million ounces of contained gold using a 0.30% copper and 0.25 grams per tonne of gold cut-off. Much of the historic work completed at Pinaya was focused on defining this resource, located within the prolific Eocene-Oligocene porphyry belt of southern Peru.
In 2022, Ivanhoe Electric completed an induced-polarization survey at Pinaya using the Typhoon data acquisition technology. The survey outlined new and compelling regional targets inferred to relate to porphyry intrusions that may be the source for the exposed Pinaya mineralization. The Typhoon survey outlined four anomalies lying to the west of a fault bounding the current Pinaya Mineral Resource, all of which remain untested. Three separate geophysical anomalies lying several kilometres to the east may represent a separate copper-gold trend. These targets remain untested, drill-ready and prospective for further porphyry discovery. The Mineral Resource is considered open to depth, and exploration drilling intersected unusually higher-grade mineralization, like 103 meters of 1.21% copper and 1.28 grams per tonne of gold, with important evidence of hypogene copper enrichment, whereby high-sulfidation bornite and chalcocite are observed replacing chalcopyrite in veins. Mineralization constrained to the resource is interpreted to be a shallow apophysis above a conceptual, larger, porphyry copper system.
Limited exploration drilling at regional prospects, Cerro Antana and Pedro2000, intersected evidence for additional centres of porphyry-skarn mineralization. Pinaya is in the final stages of permitting for drilling.
Palamina’s Sora applications cover areas south of Ivanhoe’s Pinaya resource area along the north west - south east magnetic trend defined by the Typhoon survey. Palamina has no plans to conduct exploration at Sora in 2024.