Western Australia's incentive scheme continues to supercharge minerals drilling
WA's Exploration Incentive Scheme has been operating since April 2009 to drive greenfields exploration
Scheme has delivered numerous success stories over the years with OBM identifying high-grade gold
Round 31 of the scheme has set aside $7.8m to co-fund drilling across 49 projects
There's simply no getting around the fact that mineral resources are the beating heart of Western Australia and the state government is well aware of that.
With the mining industry having contributed 44% of the state's gross state product in the 2023-24 financial year, there's vested interest in keeping the industry running.
One key way to ensure the health of the industry is ensuring that there's a healthy level of greenfields exploration – that is exploring in previously unexplored or underexplored areas – to find new resources.
To promote and accelerate exploration in these regions, the WA state government started the Exploration Incentive Scheme in April 2009. which offers co-funding for 50% of the costs of various types of exploration activity such as drilling, geophysics and energy analysis.
The scheme has delivered numerous success stories, the most recent of which was Ora Banda (ASX:OBM) identifying high-grade gold mineralisation at its Little Gem discovery using co-funding from Round 29 of the twice-yearly program.
Others include two drillholes intersecting significant gold mineralisation at Yandal Resources' (ASX:YRL) New England Granite prospect (Round 28), high-grade niobium intercepts from Dreadnought Resources' (ASX:DRE) Stinger prospect (Round 28), and a new rare earth element lode at Kingfisher Mining's (ASX:KFM) MW2 prospect (Round 29).
Round 31 saw the state government offer $11.2m across the three programs with the lion's share going to support drilling with 49 projects receiving grants totalling $7.8m.
Critical minerals are the target of 50% of the drilling applications while a full 75% of the geophysics grants are going towards discovering potential new deposits.
WA's Mines and Petroleum Minister David Michael said the EIS plays a pivotal role in overcoming the financial barriers that often prevent early-stage projects from reaching their full potential.
Here are some of the winners for Round 31.
Black Canyon (ASX:BCA)
Black Canyon has been awarded up to $122,500 under the EIS for an upcoming reverse circulation drill program of up to 150 holes totalling 3000m at its Wandanya manganese and iron project.
Approvals are in place and a Heritage Survey was recently completed allowing the clearing of access tracks and drill lines for the program to commence.
Wandanya represents a new w exploration model on the eastern margin of the Oakover Basin where the company has only drill tested 240m of the 3km long manganese target where drilling had returned results such as 5m at 31.1% manganese from surface and 5m at 32.4% manganese from 3m.
Drilling will also test outcropping iron formations that returned high grade assays of up to 64.3% iron.
Buxton Resources (ASX:BUX)
Buxton landed a $180,000 grant to co-fund maiden drilling at the Madman project about 375km northeast of Wiluna, WA.
The project has similarities to the 8.4Moz gold and copper Havieron orebody discovered by Newcrest and Greatland Gold, which in turn launched Greatland's US$475 million bid to acquire the nearby Telfer mine from Newmont.
One of the best gold discoveries in Australia in the past decade, Havieron was discovered under cover by targeting a similar magnetic feature to Madman, which is interpreted to lie under shallow cover close to the major crustal boundary, the Marloo Fault.
The company has completed a reconnaissance visit to meet key local stakeholders at Glenayle and Carnegie, stations along the famous Canning Stock Route which have contributed to derisking logistics for the drill program.
It has also submitted a heritage survey request after securing land access from the Mungarlu Nurrarakatja Rirraunkaja Aboriginal Corporation.
However, it does not need to wait on any of these to start the EIS drilling.
Errawarra Resources (ASX:ERW)
While Errawarra is focused on its Elizabeth Hill silver project, it has secured EIS funding for drilling at its Andover West project.
Andover West sits 30km south-southwest of Karratha with exploration initially targeting only mafic intrusion hosted nickel-copper mineralisation.
However, significant lithium-caesium-tantalum discoveries reported by Azure Minerals and their ongoing evaluation highlighted the potential for LCT pegmatite on Errawarra's adjoining tenement.
ERW has identified identified two prospective lithium pegmatite swarms within its project tenement located along strike of the Azure discoveries.
GreenTech Metals (ASX:GRE)
GreenTech Metals has received two EIS grants for drilling at the Whundo project and Osborne joint venture project.
Recent Stage 2 drilling at the Whundo project in the West Pilbara, WA, to test two major conductors on the unmined Shelby and Austin ore shoots returned mineralised zones with variable high-grade intersections.
At Austin, a hole returned a 7.14m intersection grading 1.46% copper, 1.23% zinc and 0.08g/t gold from 277.16m while drilling at Shelby hit a 9.94m zone at 1.32% copper and 0.18g/t gold from 598.2m.
The Osborne JV with Artemis Resources about 15km southeast of Karratha is highly prospective for lithium and nickel.
High grade lithium pegmatites have been discovered with assays returning up to 3.6% Li2O over a combined strike of 5km.
RareX (ASX:REE)
RareX has secured a grant of up to $160,000 for drilling and $15,000 for mobilisation costs for its Khaleesi project in WA's eastern Yilgarn region about 290km northeast of Kalgoorlie.
The company has already identified extensive gallium mineralisation at the project with aircore drilling returning intersections up to 86g/t gallium while rock chips have returned up to 81g/t.
This has identified a large 5km by 3km moderately mineralised body.
It plans to complete between 300m and 1300m of RC drilling at the project, with an average hole depth of 100m, across six targets.
Targets include a mix of magnetic, gravity and geochemical anomalies from historical geophysics and aircore drilling.
Trek Metals (ASX:TKM)
Over in the Kimberley region, Trek Metals has secured a grant of $180,000 to test the Martin and Zahn projects at the Christmas Creek project.
It was awarded based on the company's commitment to target major new greenfields gold discoveries undercover in frontier locations such as Christmas Creek.
The 1183km2 project southwest of Halls Creek is an underexplored, largely concealed district-scale gold and rare earths exploration opportunity.
Previous exploration to test if the area is an extension of the prolific Granites-Tanami Orogen demonstrated a correlation to the sequences that host Newmont Mining's Tanami gold mine in the Northern Territory.
Visible gold was observed in the high-grade intervals intersected by drill holes at the Martin prospect while limited work completed to date at Zahn has indicated the presence of wide zones of low-grade gold mineralisation and the coincidence of later fluid focusing structures intersecting these broad zones.
Western Mines Group has secured two EIS awards totalling $440,000 for exploration drilling its Mulga Tank project.
The company plans to drill three diamond holes – one in the main body of the Complex and two targeting the komatiite channel system in tenement E39/2134.
Diamond hole EIS8 aims to test the eastern portion of the Mobile MT anomaly and basal contact of the Mulga Tank Ultramafic Complex near MTD027.
Meanwhile, the two holes will test the recently confirmed komatiite channel system in tenement E39/2134 - targeting the basal contact and stratigraphy of a roughly 1.3km long body.
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