THE BOURSE WHISPERER: An interstate consortium of iron ore explorers has formed the Braemar Iron Alliance, to promote common infrastructure development for mining and to advance their common interests.

The companies all are actively exploring to define iron ore deposits within the Braemar Iron Formation, an iron ore province starting west of Broken Hill and stretching across the border area of South Australia and New South Wales.

The Braemar Iron Formation stretches for approximately 250 kilometres from Peterborough in SA to Broken Hill in NSW and is a region that is rapidly emerging to potentially be Australia’s next major iron ore province.

The Alliance comprises ASX-listed companies Carpentaria Exploration, Havilah Resources, Minotaur Exploration, Royal Resources and U3O8 and private companies, Sinosteel PepinNini Curnamona Management, Bonython Metals Group and Wentworth Metal Group.

According to the Alliance spokesman, Minotaur Resources managing director Andrew Woskett the creation of the alliance identifies a strong alignment between a number of listed and privately owned mineral exploration companies with tenements along the extensive Braemar Iron Formation. 

“The presence of iron mineralisation has been recognised since the 1960s but only in the past few years, with the impetus of higher iron ore prices, have explorers actively sought to define the province’s resources to the Australian JORC standard,” Woskett said.

At this present stage Carpentaria Exploration and Royal Resources have successfully reported iron-based JORC resource estimates.

Minotaur and Havilah are currently working towards initial JORC resource reports across their magnetite prospects. 

“Alliance members are confident in the iron potential for the area, based on extensive drill programs and recent definition of JORC resources,” Woskett said.

“The excellent regional potential has encouraged the Alliance members to look towards their future infrastructure needs, both individually and as a group. 

“The Alliance has a common interest in the need for a major deep water port facility on South Australia’s Spencer Gulf, approximately 150 kilometres immediately west of the Alliance area, plus power, water and transport infrastructure throughout the entire Braemar iron province.”

The Braemar Iron Alliance will provide the companies involved a focused representation to the South Australian, New South Wales and Federal Governments as well as private infrastructure providers, so that a coordinated and cohesive approach to development planning can commence.

Further, the Alliance will work with the South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy (SACOME) to ensure a consistent message is delivered to government.

In the short term, the Alliance will work under the SACOME umbrella, until its own corporate structure is formalised.  Alliance members acknowledge the practical support of SACOME in bringing the parties together in a short space of time.

Announcing the formation of the Braemar Iron Alliance at the Broken Hill Mining and Energy Symposium, Woskett said it provides a focal point for industry participants to work in close consultation with local government throughout the Braemar iron province, on the northern York Peninsula and Upper Spencer Gulf and with prospective infrastructure developers and providers.

He indicated that if all of the anticipated projects proceed to development, an investment mix of A$6 billion or more could be foreseen over the forthcoming decade, bringing significant jobs and downstream opportunities to the regions involved.

THE DRILL SERGEANT: ERO Mining has commenced an initial sonic drilling program at its Wertaloona lithium project adjacent to the Frome saltpan in central-northern South Australia.

The commencement of the program comes after the company received Aboriginal Heritage clearance with the Adnyamathanha people,

The Wertaloona project is part of two exploration licences ERO procured via its acquisition of unlisted mineral explorer, South East Energy, which is now a 100%-owned subsidiary of ERO.

Regionally the project area consists of 1,757 square kilometres that lie largely inside the Lake Frome Conservation Park, within which exploration and mining are allowed, with the remainder sitting in pastoral lease land.

According to ERO the area is underlain by several hundred metres of sediments containing sandstone beds with potential to host lithium-bearing brines.

Sonic drilling is a technique that uses vibration frequencies allowing ease of penetration, which is able to return near complete and relatively undisturbed core samples from solid and unconsolidated materials.

A hydraulic mechanism removes any need for drilling fluid minimising the chance of contamination of core samples.

Dual tube drilling methods allow for simultaneous sampling of formation waters while drilling.

The drilling program is to comprise two fully cored drillholes totalling approximately 300 metres and down hole gamma surveys.

The drillholes are to be close to two holes previously drilled by Comalco in the 1970s, when significant lithium levels were encountered.

This previous exploration work at Lake Frome undertook very broad scale testing of the surface and subsurface brines for trona (a source of sodium carbonate) and other associated salts for industrial purposes.

 More significantly, it also encountered significant lithium concentration in the southwestern corner of Lake Frome and the adjacent lowlands.

 ERO notes that the Comalco investigations were only carried out in the upper part of the Namba Formation and overlying younger sediments and that the drilling was extremely broad scale. Underlying sediments remain untested for lithium.

By undertaking the current program ERO hopes to greatly expand the depth of the historic drilling undertaken by Comalco and to test all of the middle Tertiary Namba Formation and underlying early Tertiary Eyre Formation.

Drilling technologies used by Comalco in the 1970s meant it was unable to fully test the Namba Formation or penetrate to the Eyre Formation.

ERO has carried it its own evaluation of the untested parts of the sedimentary succession and is confident of their potential to host lithium and uranium.

The company will also be taking brine samples hosted in all sandstone layers and systematically spaced sediment samples looking for lithium and other indicators, including uranium, while carrying out further hydro-geological test work employing modern techniques.

The potential of expanded drilling programs with greater focus on economic lithium concentrations, brine flow rates and volumes will also be assessed.

ERO is of the opinion the fully cored holes will provide a much better understanding of the lithium-bearing sediments and brines and will eventually become important reference holes for future drilling.

THE DRILL SERGEANT: Mineral explorer Musgrave Minerals has commenced a program of aircore drilling at its 100% owned Moorilyanna project.

Moorilyanna is located on the eastern edge of the Musgrave Geological Province and sits just 40 kilometres west of the Stuart Highway and Adelaide to Darwin railway line, in South Australia.

The aircore drilling program will test six strong copper-gold-silver targets Musgrave has identified from mapping and sampling activities.

The drilling program will consist of approximately 120 drill holes drilled through the regolith profile terminating in fresh rock for a total of more than 4,000m.

Drilling depths are expected to vary from 20 to 50m with first assay results expected to be received in late June.

Musgrave Minerals identified the mineralisation during field reconnaissance in late 2010 with surface rock chip samples returning values of up to 4.95% copper, 0.61 grams per tonne gold and 9.6g/t silver.
 
The mineralisation is hosted within a highly altered mafic dyke in an area of sparse subcrop and shallow sand cover and be traced over a strike extent of more than 6km within the main system.

“This is our maiden drilling program and an excellent first step just three weeks after listing,” Musgrave Minerals managing director Rob Waugh said in an announcement.

“The team is in the field and looking forward to first results in late June.

“Additional programs will commence shortly including an airborne EM survey and mobilisation of a second rig to drill our nickel-copper targets at Lyta.”

THE BOURSE WHISPERER: Iron ore hopeful Apollo Minerals became very excited after the recently released Commonwealth Government final report of its enquiry into mining and military activities in the Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA) in South Australia revealed it is expected to be open to exploration and mining.

The news came in a joint announcement from the Minister for Defence Stephen Smith and Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson.

“As a result of the Review, a new management framework will be introduced to increase use of the Woomera Prohibited Area in Australia’s national interest by better balancing national security and economic considerations,” Stephen Smith said.

The potential benefits for the mining industry however were more laid out more succinctly by Minister Ferguson.

“The Woomera Prohibited Area has great economic potential, with estimates that more than $35 billion of developments, including iron ore, gold and uranium projects would be possible over the next decade,” he said.

The WPA will be broken into three zones to known as the Red, Amber and Green Zones. Mining will be allowed in the Green and Amber Zones but not in the Red Zone.

Fortunately for Apollo its projects do not lie within the Red zone so there was little wonder it greeted the news with glee.

The company currently holds a 100% interest in the Commonwealth Hill Iron ore project which lies within the WPA.

According to Apollo, Commonwealth Hill contains a significant magnetic anomaly which may host magnetite mineralisation.

The adoption of the Report’s recommendations would allow mining to proceed at Apollo’s Commonwealth Hill exploration licence project area. Apollo has lodged an application for access rights to the tenement with the Department of Defence to conduct exploration.

The release of the report gives the Commonwealth Hill project address added value with the Adelaide to Darwin Railway line intersecting the company’s project.

The project has been on many radar screens attracting plenty of interest resulting in exploration by the South Australian Department of Mines and Energy and Western Plains.

Most recently Apollo commissioned geophysical consultants Southern Geoscience to review the project, which resulted in the identification of a 12 kilometre anomaly at Apollo’s project.

“The modeling (sic) of the ground magnetic data has demonstrated the potential for considerable intersections of magnetite rich layers and the inference of near surfaced weathered zone that could possibly contain iron – rich non-magnetic mineralisation,” Southern Geoscience concluded.

On receiving regulatory approval, Apollo’s next steps will be to conduct a high resolution, low level airborne magnetic survey to define the iron target zones. Subject to the results of this work, drilling is expected to take place as soon practicable.