Eastern Kazakhstan has emerged as one of the world's most active exploration frontiers for copper-gold porphyry deposits. In 2025-2026, an exploration program targeting a porphyry copper-gold system in the East Kazakhstan Region mobilized a fully hydraulic core drilling rig to complete approximately 2,000 meters of diamond core drilling across 10 NQ-sized holes, aimed at defining the extent of mineralization identified by soil geochemistry and induced polarization (IP) geophysics.
Access roads cut to drill pads, rig foundations leveled, water and fuel supplies staged. Average pad elevation: 850-950m above sea level.
10 holes drilled, NQ core size (47.6mm OD), depths ranging from 120m to 280m. Total meterage: approximately 2,000m. Formation: granodiorite porphyry with quartz veining.
Core photographed, boxed, and shipped to an ALS Minerals certified laboratory in Almaty for fire assay (gold) and four-acid digestion ICP (copper, molybdenum, trace elements).
Drill results integrated into a 3D geological model, defining a mineralized envelope open along strike and at depth.
The granodiorite porphyry at the project site presented two distinct drilling challenges. First, the upper 20-40 meters consisted of highly weathered, broken rock with low recovery — zones where standard diamond core barrels produced fragmented, poor-quality core. The solution was to use a triple-tube core barrel (TM-3) and reduce drilling fluid flow to minimum, which improved core recovery from 60% to over 95% in the weathered zone.
Second, quartz-carbonate veining zones (associated with copper mineralization) were hard and abrasive, causing premature bit wear. The drilling team switched from standard impregnated diamond bits to surface-set diamond bits with a higher concentration of industrial-grade diamonds, extending bit life from 40 meters to 80-100 meters per bit in the veined sections.
Overall core recovery averaged 94% across all 10 holes, with the mineralized intervals (identified by quartz veining, pyrite-chalcopyrite staining, and altered feldspar) recovering at 97% or better. Several holes returned significant copper-gold intercepts, including one 115-meter interval grading 1.44 g/t gold and 0.24% copper — results that justified follow-up drilling in 2026-2027.
From an operational standpoint, the fully hydraulic core rig averaged 25-30 meters of NQ hole per 12-hour shift, with a best single-shift performance of 42 meters. The rig's hydraulic feed system allowed precise weight-on-bit control, which is critical for maintaining core quality in brittle veined zones where excessive weight causes core discing.
In exploration drilling, core recovery is the product. A rig that drills fast but returns broken, unusable core wastes the entire program — assay labs cannot analyze fragmented core, and geologists cannot log structural angles. The investment in a triple-tube barrel and proper bit selection paid for itself in the first hole, where 95%+ recovery meant every meter drilled produced valid, assay-ready sample material.
We supply fully hydraulic core drilling rigs capable of BQ/NQ/HQ coring to 1,000-1,500m depth, with diamond core barrels, wireline retrieval systems, and cold-weather packages for Central Asian field conditions.
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