News that caught my eye this week No. 15
Back to it!
G’day all,
My hiatus was longer than expected. As many of you who know me in real life would have seen on LinkedIn, I was in Windhoek attending the SEG. A conference for nerds as one reader suggested. Guilty as charged!
It was my first time in Namibia and I highly recommend a visit if you get a chance. Without making this a travel or lifestyle blog, I and my colleague went for some drinks upon arrival and the 11 beers at this fine establishment along with 2 burger meals set us back about 80 Dollarydoos. A deal in my books.
The other location of consequence for me was Joe’s Beer House where one could get the Bushman’s Sosatie. A BBQ skewer of African meats with vegetables. The night I had it they ran out of crocodile and served giraffe instead.
The conference was very nice although the talks are starting to get a bit stale and starting to feel overly safe (wink, wink to the organizers reading this).
In the time that I was away it seems like the fed’s 0.5 drop has turned risk back on. In the case of Li, this along with the curtailing of some lepidolite processing has put a rocket under the Li producers and hopefuls. i.e. Mineral Resources, Pilbara Minerals. Although, the share prices appear to be looking for some direction at the moment.
There has been a few updates to the tracker and a few interesting targets that have come up in the mean time. On with the regular programing.
The Tracker
GAL drilling that 16k S conductor (Results Reported below)
Assay update from CUS on Douglas Creek (Assays expected Oct)
ENR drilling at Sandover
GCM drilling at Boulia (Drilling completed awaiting assays)
Follow ups
Galileo Mining- GAL- Exploration Results and Upcoming Drilling
Galileo released the results of their drilling and despite hitting more of the same encouraging mineralization as seen previously the speculated high-grade heavy sulphide mineralization has alluded them. In particular the basal position hosting the EM anomaly did turn out to be sulphide in ultramafic, however it contained no elevated PGE.
It would appear that we got door 2 as outlined in the original article. Doors 2 and 3 tend to be the cause of most EM anomalies, no matter how good looking. Hence why I don’t touch any of this until discovery confirmation.
The company is continuing activity through a 5000m AC program targeting the Mission Sill and favorable Callisto type basal positions.
I will continue to follow progress as the deposit model is clearly still viable and the discovery potential not yet extinguished. It will be dropping off the tracker, which coincidentally is starting to look a bit sad, but there is a point to all this that I will elaborate on in the future.
Estrella Resources- ESR- Sica and Lalena Prospects Deliver Exceptional Assays
ESR’s share price as seen some life since I initially began writing about it, matching the action on the ground. Activities appear to be ramping up with the company putting in proposals to break ground and located the sources shedding the high-grade Mn mineralization located thus far.
The company went some way to explaining what they are trying to locate, a Mn enriched paleo-weathering surface concealed by later limestone.
In effect, at some time in the past exposed weathering of the limestone concentrated Mn on the surface which was subsequently drowned by rising sea levels leading to further limestone deposition on top. Today gullies have cut into this stratigraphy eroding and concentrating the Mn in places.
Interestingly the company took some local Glencore representatives out to see some outcrops, or maybe they bumped into each other.
New interesting targets
Buxton Resources- BUX- Heritage Clearance received for drilling at West Arunta
Ah man…. this one just mainlined Greenfields Blue Sky goodness strait into me!
A complex magnetic and gravity anomaly cluster of significant intensity (+10mgal) sitting under 400m + of Canning basin sediments that failed to be penetrated by CRA in the early 90’s with the rods getting bogged at 432 m.
What could this be? The company is speculating IOCG mineralization off the back of the very strong gravity anomaly and some encouragement seen in the CRA hole that had pyrite-chlorite altered intrusive clasts sitting in Permian conglomerates with a speculative proximal source.
I suspect that it almost certainly is not economic mineralization of any sort, but that’s a cowards take on the subject. Most prospects are not economic mineralization and the likes of something in the middle of nowhere, with no infrastructure, 400 + meters down having the goods to be a mine are slim. But that is literarily the 1974 description of Olympic Dam. The very deposit type the company is looking for here.
The companies pegging of this ground precedes the Luni discovery with which it now shares a up and coming neighborhood (albeit, its a big postcode). Remember WA1 were looking for IOCG’s as well.
I salute BUX for pursuing this target (and the WA government for chipping in 220k). They are smooth operators responsible for the Merlin Nickel discovery that bagged them millions in IGO funded expenditure on their ground eventually leading to the Dogleg discovery that they maintain a 15% taste in.
The former won IGO discovery of the year this week. I don’t mean to diminish the effort. A big congratulations to the team, but if this discovery has taken the gold, it shows what a slow year 2024 has been. Lets hope the action picks up, maybe from this prospect.
Its not clear when the company will drill this but going off WA1’s previous halts to activity I suspect it will be after cyclone season in 2025.
Terramin Australia- TZN- Exploration Drilling programme commenced at the SGRP
The South Gawler Ranges project is one that Terramin has had on the books for a while and the last time I came across it they had it JV’d to Freeport. This has since been transferred to JOGMEC who is drilling some deep holes.
Given that this is a bit of a sideshow for Terramin from their main activity of trying to get the Tala Hamza Zn deposit developed in Algeria the announcements generally lack figures but the company provides the description below.
There are a number of deposit types in the area including the mentioned Menninnie Dam that make for a eclectic mix of manifestations of the 1589Ma Hiltaba magmatic suite, ranging from Low Sulphidation Quartz-Adularia Au to Sn-skarns and epithermal Ag deposits such as Paris.
The key here is that these are prospects and concepts the company has been jealously holding onto for years that are now finally getting tested. Anyone who has attended the South Australian Geological Surveys “Discovery days” would have heard about this area and the speculated occurrence of bona-fide IOCG’s at depth, I tried to track down one of the presentations down but this excerpt was the best I could find.
I watch with interest.
Honorable Mentions
A few of interest this week
Investigator Resources- IVR- Curnamona Exploration Update
Sarytogan Graphite- SGA- First Copper Target Delineated
Lithcfield Minerals- LMS- Litchfield Secures Strategic Copper-Gold Portfolio NT update
Mantle Minerals- MTL- RC Drilling has Commenced at Roberts Hill and Mt Berghaus
Great Western Exploration- GTE- Juggernaut VHMS Copper-Gold Target
Disclaimer
Nothing here is financial advice, comes with no warranty and I take no responsibility for anyone’s financial decisions.
Cheers,
CC