AYNAK: A WORLD-CLASS SEDIMENT-HOSTED COPPER DEPOSIT, AFGHANISTAN

摘要

The Aynak copper deposit, located 30 km south of Kabul in Afghanistan (Figure 1), was discovered by Soviet geologists in the 1970s. Extensive exploration undertaken in the area between 1974-80 included several hundred boreholes, seventy trenches and nine exploratory adits. This work identified a "drill-indicated resource" of 240 Mt at 2.3 percent Cu (ESCAP, 1995). The structure at Aynak is dominated by the Aynak anticline. The anticline is asymmetrical and approximately 4 km in length and up to 2.5 km wide. The south-eastern limb dips gently to the south-east but the north-western limb is steeply dipping and in places overturned, with dips of 45-70o to the south-east. The periclinal closure of the anticline at its western end is asymmetrical. Here, the southern limb is overturned and the axial plane is inclined towards the north-north-east. Several sets of later faults cut across the folds. As a result of folding, Aynak is divided into two prospects. The Central Aynak prospect is located on the shallow-dipping eastern limb of the anticline and the Western Aynak prospect occurs in the area of the periclinal closure at the western end of the structure (Figure 2).