Matt Birney

Hawkstone Mining has expanded the Exploration Target for its Big Sandy lithium clay project in Arizona state, US, by 15%, with new mapping and sampling in the Southern Mineralised Zone demonstrating similar geology to ore zones recently drilled further north. The updated Exploration Target now stands at between 280.1 million and 492.6 million tonnes grading from 1,000 ppm lithium to just over 2,000 ppm lithium.

Venus Metals and Rox Resources have revealed that 1m interval drilling assays from their Currans Find North gold discovery near Youanmi, WA, have provided significant upgrades to the initial 4m composite samples tabled earlier this month. New high-grade results included 3m @ 32.58g/t gold from 115m and 4m @ 9.25g/t gold from 46m down-hole, which contained a 2-metre section at 16.05g/t gold from 48m.

Buru Energy is targeting further oil production from its Ungani oilfield in the onshore Canning Basin in Western Australia with the spudding of its Ungani-7H development well. The company plans to use a coiled tubing unit to drill the horizontal Ungani Dolomite reservoir sections of the earlier Ungani-6H and the current Ungani-7H wells in October, before placing both wells into production.

Strike Energy could be sitting on a major new gas discovery after drilling through a 41m gas net pay zone at its West Erregulla-2 well in Western Australia’s Perth Basin. Average porosities are good too at 14.3% in the primary Kingia sandstone target. Management said the result compares favourably with log data from the nearby producing Waitsia gas field that created quite a stir when it was discovered.

Adriatic Metals has generated additional high-grade base metal drilling results adjacent to its flagship Rupice deposit in central Bosnia, just a month after producing a maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource for the ore body. New intersections include 38m @ 6.2% zinc, 3.8% lead, 174g/t silver, 1.9g/t gold, 0.4% copper and 33% barite from 208m and 20m @ 2% zinc, 2.8% lead, 96g/t silver, 0.3g/t gold and 0.6% copper from 254m.

Nusantara Resources has appointed a new CEO to fast-track the development of its Awak Mas gold project in Indonesia. Mining veteran Neil Whitaker has joined the company in a Jakarta-based role, where he will utilise his expertise in the Asia-Pacific region to drive the project forward. Mr Whitaker previously worked as the COO for PT Petrosea Tbk, a subsidiary of the company’s strategic partner in Indonesia, Indika Energy.

88 Energy has brought on UK oil and gas independent Premier Oil as its farm-in partner for the conventional rights at the project known as “Project Icewine” in the famed North Slope oil province. Premier will earn 60% in Area A of Project Icewine’s conventional oil rights by drilling a USD$23m well to appraise the historical Malguk-1 discovery well that intersected 251 feet of light oil pay in the Torok formation.

Novo Resources is building up excitement at its Egina project in the Pilbara, WA, after a bulk sampling program of surface gravels recovered significant quantities of gold nuggets at grades well above typical alluvial gold deposits. The company said the gold is coarse enough to extract without using water and is evaluating whether the ores could be extracted using simple and cheap mining methods like continuous mining.

Infinity Lithium has delivered outstanding pre-feasibility study results for its fully integrated San José project in Spain, revealing that the operation will produce a pre-tax net present value of USD$860m and an internal rate of return of 42%. The project has an initial life of mine of 30 years and the company will both mine lithium mineralisation from the operation and process the ores into battery-grade lithium hydroxide products.