Awtad Copper Gold Project
Background
Alara has recently secured rights to earn-in up to a 70% interest in the Awtad Copper-Gold Project located in Oman.
The Licence Area No. 8 (Block 8) comprising the Awtad Project is located immediately adjacent to the Licence Area No. 7 (Block 7) comprising the Daris Copper-Gold Project in which Alara has an interest.
Project Summary
- The Awtad Project contains a known occurrence of copper mineralisation based upon previous exploration.
- Alara is targeting Cyprus type VMS deposits in close proximity to known deposits. The VMS prospectivity model of Block 8 has identified five target areas along the strike extension of known copper occurrences.
- The Awtad Project area is ~120km by paved highway from an operating copper concentrator and smelter in Sohar.
Project Details
The Project is located ~130km west of Muscat, the capital of Oman and currently comprises a mineral excavation license for copper ores of ~49,667 hectares (Concession). The Concession owner is currently seeking an expansion of the mineral rights from copper to include gold ores.
The Awtad Project is located in the Semail Ophiolite belt in Northern Oman that extends over 800km. This belt provides a prospective setting for Cyprus-type VMS copper gold deposits. In the past, the Government-owned Oman Mining Company has produced, mined and treated 14 million tonnes of copper resource at between 1 to 2% copper from open cut mines at their Lasail, Arja and Baida mines in this belt.
More recently, a privately owned Omani company has located a large resource of copper ~70 km west of the Project area.
Alara believes that the Awtad Project area has the potential to host substantial copper mineralisation and plans to pursue a systematic modern exploration programme over Block 8.
The proximity to the capital city, a paved highway and modern copper extraction facilities nearby (in Sohar) should assist in the development of early cash flow from any discoveries made in the Awtad Project area.
