Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN) and UK-based Pallas Resources have launched a 15,000-metre diamond drill campaign across a vast 16,000 km² licence package in Kazakhstan’s Chu-Sarysu Basin marking one of the largest greenfield copper exploration efforts globally in 2025.
The Chu-Sarysu Basin, ranked as the world’s third-largest sediment-hosted copper district, hosts 27 million tonnes of known copper and an estimated 25 million tonnes of undiscovered reserves, according to the US Geological Survey.
Fieldwork on the Merke licence in the basin’s south revealed visible copper mineralization—malachite, azurite, and chalcocite across a 20-metre-thick zone, with surface samples returning grades between 1.0% and 5.0% copper.
Drilling has commenced on the Glubokoe licence in the basin’s west, targeting extensions of mineralization first intersected in Soviet-era holes. Ivanhoe will sole-fund up to $18.7 million over two years, with an option to earn up to 80% across seven projects for a total of $115 million.
“This is a transformational moment for Kazakhstan’s copper frontier,” said Robert Friedland, Executive Co-Chairman of Ivanhoe Mines. “The scale of the licence package seven times larger than our Western Forelands project in the DRC combined with visible mineralization and historical data, gives us a compelling framework for discovery.”
The Merke licence’s 36-kilometre stratigraphic trend and structural features suggest strong sedimentary and fault-controlled copper emplacement. Follow-up work will include high-resolution magnetic surveys and structural mapping to trace mineralization at depth.
The initial drill holes, ranging from 800 to 1,000 metres, will calibrate new geophysical models and refine targeting for the remainder of the campaign.
Kazakhstan’s mining sector already contributes 14% to GDP and 17.5% to exports, yet exploration spending has averaged just $100 million annually over the past 15 years. The Ivanhoe-Pallas alliance signals a shift, leveraging Soviet-era datasets and modern techniques to unlock new copper corridors.
For global markets, the implications are significant. As demand for copper intensifies driven by electrification, infrastructure, and green energy the emergence of a new copper district could ease supply constraints and diversify sourcing away from traditional producers. The Chu-Sarysu campaign may well become a cornerstone of the next copper supercycle.
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