Western Mines targets further growth at huge Goldfields nickel deposit
The program will include reverse circulation drilling to infill and potentially extend the company's remarkable nickel-cobalt-copper-platinum-palladium resource, as well as further diamond drilling to test high-impact targets.
Western Mines believes its April mineral resource estimate represents the biggest nickel sulphide deposit in Australia and could easily find itself among the top 10 nickel sulphide resources in the world.
The total combined inferred and indicated mineral resource at a 0.2 per cent nickel cutoff grade amounts to 1.97 billion tonnes at 0.27 per cent nickel, 131 parts per million (ppm) cobalt, 82ppm copper and 17 parts per billion combined platinum plus palladium group elements (PGE).
Translated to metals, the total combined resource contains 5.3Mt of nickel, 257,000t cobalt, 161,000t copper and 1.1 million ounces of combined platinum and palladium.
The delivery of this inaugural combined mineral resource estimate about 2.5 months ago was a transformational milestone for the project and the company.
While its scale is eye-popping at this stage, more remarkably, the results represent only a modest proportion of the total apparent prospective volume swept by drilling to date, which has mostly focussed on the central zone of the Mulga Tank ultramafic complex.
Drilling planned for the second half of the year will involve a combination of new reverse circulation and diamond drill holes, funded by the company's recent capital raise in May and three state government Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) grants for the Mulga Tank project.
The upcoming work will be the company's fourth reverse circulation program and is designed primarily to test south of the previous central area of drilling. WMG will also put in some infill holes within the current resource estimate in the main body of the Mulga Tank ultramafic complex.
Western Mines has already pre-collared four of the reverse circulation holes, which are about 300 metres south of the previous block of drilling undertaken in a phase three program.
More holes are planned to infill between the two areas of indicated mineral resource to increase the company's resource confidence. Subject to the results, another fence of seven or more holes might be drilled immediately south of the current resource to extend the mineral resource.
The company says the step-out drilling will target new areas to identify higher grade nickel which could offer shallow zones of about 0.40 per cent nickel as 'starter pits'.
Further diamond drilling will follow-up on high-grade results from a previous hole in September that hit 5m at 1.92 per cent nickel and 0.21 per cent cobalt.
These additional holes will target the western margin of the Mulga Tank complex to follow-up results of the company's prospectivity review of the basal architecture and its mapping of high-grade and high-tenor massive sulphide globules
Marriott says the company's exciting results from its review of the basal architecture and frequent occurrences of massive sulphide globules has led it back to the western margin of the complex.
Two diamond holes will chase up results from two regional reverse circulation holes. WMG's first regional-scale belt-wide drilling program, northwest of the main area of resource drilling, set out to test the interpreted komatiite channel system, which radiates mainly north and northwest from the main body of the ultramafic.
The two holes will test the 1.3km-long body interpreted from aeromagnetic imagery and will attempt to capture the stratigraphy of the komatiite system and target basal contact that wasn't reached with the shallower reverse circulation holes.
The company also plans to put a diamond tail onto a previous reverse circulation hole that ended in mineralisation.
A further deep diamond hole will be drilled via the EIS scheme to test the basal contact of the complex and target the far eastern portion of a conductive MobileMT anomaly 'grazed' by a previous diamond drill hole.
That hole returned 96m at 0.40 per cent nickel and 0.016 per cent cobalt 1208m downhole, including 38m at 0.56 per cent nickel and 0.016 per cent cobalt from 1262m. Within the hit, an 8m section went 1.11 per cent nickel and 0.018 per cent cobalt from 1270m at a corresponding depth to the anomaly.
Those results, from heavily disseminated sulphide mineralisation, may represent Perseverance-style 'cloud' nickel sulphides named after those seen at Leinster, 330km north of Kalgoorlie and which could be close to a basal massive sulphide accumulation.
Diamond drilling at Mulga Tank has also revealed textures characteristic of Type-2 disseminated nickel sulphide systems, which are exemplified by Western Australia's Mount Keith nickel deposit, 80km south of Wiluna in WA.
These dual styles suggest that Mulga Tank could be a hybrid system, where different settling mechanisms of the sulphides took place, and that greatly increases the system's prospectivity. It could also point to possible significant basal accumulations of massive and matrix-type sulphide.
The company has arranged for a down-hole electro-magnetic (DHEM) survey team to mobilise to site shortly to run the probe down some of its phase three reverse circulation holes, including the high-grade hole that yielded 5m at 1.92 per cent nickel and 0.21 per cent copper from 283m.
The survey will also test a second hole that ran 4m at 1.16 per cent nickel and 0.13 per cent copper from 182m, including 1m at 2.46 per cent nickel and 0.43 per cent copper from 183m.
Results from the survey will be used to plan follow-up diamond holes looking to twin higher grade reverse circulation holes and/or target off-hole conductors, potentially indicating thicker intersections of shallow massive sulphide material. They will also help the company follow-up other diamond holes in these areas.
If this new program is as successful as the company's previous campaigns, Mulga Tank will almost certainly continue to yield a host of intriguing intercepts from its lateral extensions, the regional komatiitic channels and its deeper massive sulphide zones.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
matt.birney@wanews.com.au
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