Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Each week any number of junior exploration plays set out to drill their ground. Here’s a small selection of what’s been happening this week.
Diamond drilling commences at BM1
Encounter Resources (ASX: ENR) has commenced diamond drilling at the BM1 prospect at the company’s Yeneena project in Western Australia.
The diamond drill program is targeting copper sulphide mineralisation to the south east of the high-grade copper oxide and supergene copper zone that was expanded by recent RC drilling.
Exploration at the BM1 prospect is being conducted as part of the Antofagasta earn-in agreement.
RC drilling completed during June and July 2014 intersected copper mineralisation outside the area of previously defined mineralisation at BM1.
The initial two hole diamond drilling program will test for copper sulphide mineralisation down dip to the south east of the high grade copper oxide mineralisation discovered at BM1.
A second target that will be tested in this program is for potential high-grade structurally controlled copper sulphides directly below the near surface copper mineralisation discovered at BM1.
Drilling at Yangibana
Hastings Rare Metals (ASX: HAS) has commenced its Stage 2 drilling program at the Yangibana project in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia.
Reverse circulation (RC) drilling is under way and diamond drilling is planned to start towards the end of September.
The target within the Yangibana project is for rare earths mineralisation associated with ironstone lenses that occur within a large intrusive unit of carbonatite affinity, now termed the Gifford Creek Carbonatite Complex.
Eleven such ironstone targets were previously drilled in the 1980s and non-JORC resources were estimated for each.
Hastings completed the first JORC resource estimate for the Yangibana project, based on its Stage 1 drilling program at the Yangibana North deposit in July 2014.
Diamond drilling at Teena
Rox Resources (ASX: RXL) has commenced a 4,000 metre diamond drilling at the Teena prospect, which forms part of the Reward zinc project in the Northern Territory.
The Reward project is subject to an option/Joint Venture agreement between Rox (49%) and Teck Australia (51%), a subsidiary of Canada’s largest diversified resource company Teck Resources Limited.
Teck have elected to increase its JV interest to 70 per cent by expending up to $15 million in total by 31 August 2018.
“This new diamond drilling program is designed to define the limits of the large high-grade zinc mineralised system already discovered at Teena,” Rox Resources managing director Ian Mulholland said.
“The results will give us a better idea of the size dimensions and therefore resource potential.”
Teena was discovered by Teck in August 2013 after drilling four deep, widely-spaced diamond drill holes into a prospective mineralised basin, located just eight kilometres west of the McArthur River zinc-lead mine.
Kendenup Nickel Target
Windward Resources (ASX: WIN) has commenced diamond drill testing of the company’s Kendenup nickel target, located near Mount Barker, in the Fraser Range South (FRS) project area.
The Kendenup prospect was identified as a high-priority target from a HeliTEM survey flown over the area.
Follow-up soil geochemistry, over the discrete late-channel EM conductor, produced a coherent 20-times background nickel anomaly.
A recently completed ground fixed-loop EM (FLEM) survey was carried out to confirm and clarify the original HeliTEM anomaly.
Two initial drillholes will be completed to test the target zone with a third contingent on results from the first two. Drilling results are expected by mid-September.
Several other high-order conductors identified from the HeliTEM survey within the
Kendenup area are yet to be followed-up.
Drilling commences at Red Bull
Sheffield Resources (ASX: SFX) has commenced drilling a large, strong bedrock conductor – RBD1 – at the company’s Red Bull nickel-copper project.
Red Bull is within 20 kilometres of Sirius Resources’ (ASX: SIR) Nova deposit, in the Fraser Range Nickel Province in WA.
The RBD1 conductor was identified from Moving and Fixed Loop Transient Electromagnetic (MLTEM & FLTEM) ground geophysical surveys as a broad, deep conductive anomaly located at the junction of three interpreted faults and a mafic/ultramafic rock sequence.
The diamond drill hole is expected to take two to three weeks to complete and will be immediately followed by a down-hole EM survey.