Porphyry or not to be Before LION received the Navilawa concessions, there was a lot of interest by many other companies, ( a couple well known hear-tell), to get the new tenement leases. LION, once they started building the mine, was in the catbird seat.
Tuvatu is a low sulphidation
epithermal gold system associated with the Navilawa Intrusive Complex. Many of the targets in the new tenements will be for epithermal lodes but also, as they say in their news release: "
There are 11 previously identified prospects for both gold and
copper-gold porphyry targets." These other mining companies that wanted the tenements see great potentiial in the search for new epithermal lodes, but also in the search for porphyries.
Essentially Porphyries are large, deeper mineralized zones that can feed the epithermal systems above. They are of lower grade and generally mined via open pit. Many of the most valuable gold mines in the world are porphry deposits ( a number being in the south Pacific). "
Porphyry copper deposits are among the largest reservoirs of gold in the upper crust and are important potential sources for gold in lower temperature epithermal deposits." Here are two good resources. [url=https://https://www.visualcapitalist.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-copper-porphyries/]click here[/url]
and also here There is a company called Geopacific Resources that has a number of tenements in Fiji which include The Sabeto & Vuda sections approximately 7km to the west of Tuvatu, well outside of the caldera. They believe a porphyry may underly that area and a few years ago put a lot of effort into magnetic mapping, and VTEM surveys. They drilled five deep holes (250 meters to 650 m) and found evidence of porphyry mineralization, but no cigar. They said the holes seemed to be heading in the right direction but they didn't drill more holes. They haven't done work in Fiji lately but instead went after finds in Cambodia and other places. It seems they are faltering. (share price $.02) There are some very interesting slides from a June 2016 presentation, slides 15-19,
click Here ____________
.........It seems to me that Geopacific is perhaps too far west for prime porphyry hunting, and that the more likely hunting grounds would be to follow the gravity signature through Tuvata, north through the caldera and beyond.
From one of the info sites hyperlinked above, it said :
Many of the largest porphry deposits in the world are noted by their Potassim and Monzonitic intrusions. (Just like Navilawa) Porphyry hunting below the Kingston mine would be a priority I should think. That gold, copper, silver came up from somewhere down there.
(40.6% Cu and 176 g of Au and 130 g of silver per ton !.) That being said,I wouldn't want an open pit in my backyard and I wouldn't want to see it on a small island like Fiji. Lion will find plenty of tons of high grade gold with underground mining. It may be inevitable, though, if they hit big on a porphyry. Fiji has a $9,000 per capita income, a 7.7% unemployment rate and they over rely rely on tourism, sugar and overseas citizens sending back money. Money talks, and a major new find would provide a lot of it, as well as employment and diversification for the nation.
It also would provide great benefit for the owners of LION One Metals, by the by.