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C3 Metals secures drill permit for Arthur’s Seat

Published:Wednesday | December 7, 2022 | 12:08 AM

Canadian mining company C3 Metals Inc has received approvals from the National Environment and Planning Agency to begin exploration drilling for gold, silver and copper at Arthur’s Seat in Clarendon, lands which have been untouched since 1992. C3...

Canadian mining company C3 Metals Inc has received approvals from the National Environment and Planning Agency to begin exploration drilling for gold, silver and copper at Arthur’s Seat in Clarendon, lands which have been untouched since 1992.

C3 Metals has planned an initial 5,000-metre drilling programme, comprising some 25 holes from 11 drill pad locations on the property, which spans 6,000 hectares. Phase one of the drill programme will begin “imminently”, the company said.

The first drill pad is now under construction and will see C3 Metals testing a quartz-rich structure that is up to 40m wide, with surface rock chip samples revealing up to 43.2 grammes per tonne, or g/t, of gold.

Some 1,775 rock chips have been sampled from Arthur’s Seat, of which 161 came back positive for copper greater than one per cent, while 41 contained gold greater than 1.0 g/t.

The drill programme will allow the company to better estimate the grade of the mineral resources and how deep they extend.

C3 Metals’ explorations in Jamaica began in 2011. The company, formerly known as Carube Copper, now holds five licences in Jamaica, two of which are special, exclusive prospecting licences covering 84 square kilometres at Bellas Gate, St Catherine. It also has mining licences for Arthur’s Seat and Main Ridge in Clarendon, and Hungry Gully in St Thomas.

The Canadian mining company had brought in equipment to drill five prospective areas in the Bellas Gate community – at Connors, Camel Hill, Geo Hill, Provost and Hendley – to unearth what it said were “loads of tonnage potential for copper”.

C3 Metal has drilled two holes at Bellas Gates, in the areas of Connors and Camel Hill, but says its needs more powerful equipment to test the deeper area of the drill site.

“We plan to secure a drill rig capable of reaching target depths of this geophysical anomaly,” C3 Metals CEO Dan Symons said last month. In the meantime, the existing drill rig would be utilised for the maiden drill programme at the Arthur’s Seat project, he said.

karena.bennett@gleanerjm.com