Minotaur Exploration drilling in two places at once with OZ
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Minotaur Exploration (ASX: MEP) is drilling for copper and other base metals in two highly endowed geological provinces; the Olympic Dam domain in South Australia and around Cloncurry in Queensland.
The Adelaide-based explorer is undertaking both programs with OZ Minerals (ASX: OZL) under differing arrangements for each.
The drilling is testing geophysical targets Bellatrix, Orion, and Jupiter (SA) plus Iris North, Iris South and Royal (Qld).
OZ Minerals has opened its exploration tenements around the Prominent Hill copper mine in South Australia to Minotaur and after several months of database research and modelling Minotaur recommended four geophysical targets for joint follow-up work, with which OZ Minerals concurred.
Work completed in the months leading up to drilling involved detailed on-ground geophysics, IP and EM, refining those targets to drill readiness status.
Diamond drilling has commenced, testing three prospective electrical-geophysical responses: Bellatrix, Orion and Jupiter.
This work is proceeding under an Alliance agreement whereby OZ Minerals and Minotaur each contribute up to $1.5 million to proof test agreed targets.
Minotaur will be awarded 20 per cent beneficial interest in any designated target and can earn an additional 10 per cent upon electing to sole fund a further $2 million of exploration expenditure.
At the Eloise JV south-east of Cloncurry, OZ Minerals is farming into Minotaur’s tenements through an initial $1.5 million spend through 2016.
Ultimately, OZ Minerals could earn 70 per cent interest by investing $10 million in the ground.
Here, the partners are targeting Cannington-style silver-lead-zinc and Eloise-style copper-gold mineralisation.
OZ Minerals provided funding for Minotaur to recent complete extensive ground gravity and electromagnetic (EM) surveys, along the Levuka Shear Zone north of the existing Eloise copper mine, locating three strong EM conductors about five kilometres from the mine.
The Iris and Royal anomalies lie just 135m below surface and represent high conductance indicators to the presence of sulphide mineralisation; potentially containing base metals.
In geological terms these prospects sit within, or immediately adjacent to, interpreted Mt Norna Quartzite, a regionally significant rock unit that hosts the Eloise and Osborne copper-gold mines and the world-class Cannington silver-lead-zinc mine.
“Minotaur would be suitably chuffed should our work ultimately reveal an economic grade mineral discovery to complement either of the existing nearby mines,” Minotaur Exploration managing director Andrew Woskett said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
“It would vindicate our learnings, some favourable and some less so, through recent years around Cloncurry, now applied around Prominent Hill and Eloise.
“These are all cracking targets and we can’t wait to see the drill core evidence to explain each source of anomalism.”
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Website: www.minotaurexploration.com.au