Mikhail Kornilov

Künkünür Silver

The Künkünür license area is located in the core of the anticlinal fold of sedimentary rocks of the Lower Permian age northeast of the Mangazeysky exploration license, where Silver Bear is mining silver. For the first time, the site’s prospect was estimated at 1,000 tons of silver with the grade 5,000 r/t of P2-P1 category geological resources during a geological survey of scale 1:50,000 in the 90s. Therefore, the work of 2018-19, primarily, aimed at verifying the previous results and estimation the boundaries of the ore field. For the fieldwork, we used the ground-based complex of geophysical methods, areal lithogeochemical surveys and bulldozer trenching. As a result of these works, a large-scale ore-bearing structure of northeastern strike with a length of more than three kilometers was established. Within it are several silver-polymetallic vein type zones of quartz-siderite composition with a thickness up to 2.5 m located in a ladder-like form. The silver grade in the three most prospective vein zones reaches three or more kilograms per ton. Ore minerals are represented by galena, fahl ore and silver sulfosalts. The composition of ore is similar to the Verticalny deposit located 20 km away. At present, about 20% of the license area has been explored, and the ore-bearing structure should be expected to continue in a southeastern direction. The current resource estimate of the Künkünür license area is over a thousand tons of silver with average grade about 1,000 g / t.