Winners are grinners in WA Exploration Incentive grants

THE DRILL SERGEANT: Western Australia Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Marmion announced successful applicants for Round 11 of the Co-funded Drilling Program at the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies convention during the week.

“This is about identifying potential new mines and the jobs and opportunities they can deliver for West Australians,” Marmion said in his address to the convention.

Marmion highlighted the fact that the latest round of government sponsored co-funding coincided with the development of the first mine to be developed as a result of an EIS discovery is under construction.

“More than 500 workers are building Sirius Resources’s Nova nickel project in the Fraser Range, a newly identified mineral region showing great promise that typifies the focus of the EIS,” he said.

 

Round eleven of the EIS comes in the seventh year of the scheme, which has contributed to the discovery of the Nova and Camelwood nickel deposits, the Yeneena copper deposits, and the Millennium zinc and Dusk til Dawn gold discoveries.

Winners this round include:

Cassini Resources (ASX: CZI)

Cassini has delineated a sizeable down-hole electromagnetic (DHEM) anomaly at the Succoth prospect on the company’s 100 per cent-owned West Musgrave project.

Succoth is an advanced exploration prospect located 13 kilometres from the company’s main project, the Nebo-Babel deposits.

Work to date at Succoth has focussed on defining predominantly copper-rich, disseminated mineralisation over a strike of three kilometres.

Cassini said the EIS funding will be used to drill a diamond hole to test the conductor, which it has interpreted to potentially represent massive sulphides at the apparent down-plunge position of the existing mineralisation.

All necessary approvals are in place and site preparations for drilling are underway with operations expected to commence in mid-July.

Octagonal Resources (ASX: ORS)

Octagonal Resources scored funding for the second phase of diamond drilling at the Burns copper-gold prospect at the company’s Hogan’s project in Western Australia.

Octagonal has been offered the full $70,000 in government funding it applied for to pay for up to 50 per cent of direct drilling costs for a multi-hole project.

“We are pleased to accept the Western Australian Government’s assistance with funding our continued exploration of the Burns copper-gold prospect,” Octagonal Resources managing director Anthony Gray said.

“This grant will help fund the drilling of two diamond holes at the Burns prospect, where we continue systematic testing for a massive sulphide copper-gold deposit using down-hole electromagnetic techniques, while at the same time testing for other potential controls on the distribution of copper and gold.”

Octagonal said it anticipated drilling to commence in early 2016.

Minotaur Exploration (ASX: MEP)

Minotaur Exploration has been successful in its applications for two co-funded drilling grants.

The first – $104,500 – covers the Valdez prospect, located 35 kilometres south-east of Leinster where Minotaur recently completed a moving loop EM survey over interpreted ultramafic lithology considered to be the same stratigraphic sequence hosting the Waterloo nickel mine, located 8km to the south.

Two diamond drillholes have been designed to test the EM response and at around 350 metres depth intersect ultramafic rocks equivalent to host lithologies of the Waterloo deposit, a ‘blind’ orebody also discovered using moving loop ground EM.

The second grant – $75,000 – covers the Saints nickel sulphide deposit, 65km north-west of Kalgoorlie, located on the western limb of the Scotia-Kanowna Anticline.

Saints comprises two mineralised zones 400m apart – St Andrews and St Patricks – and the Western Contact, all positioned along strike from the historic Scotia underground nickel mine.

A single stratigraphic diamond drillhole will test the company’s theory that the Saints deposits and the western contact mineralisation are part of the same komatiite channel.

Apollo Minerals (ASX: AON)

Apollo Minerals has been awarded up to $150,000 in funding towards a proposed 2015 drilling program at the company’s Fraser Range project, located approximately 40km southwest and along strike from Sirius Resources’ Nova-Bollinger nickel mine.

During 2015, the company plans to drill test surface geochemical and electro-magnetic (EM) targets across a number of prospects including the Oceanus and Plato areas.

Access approvals for drilling have been granted across several targets allowing exploration activities to advance immediately.