Matt Birney

Strike Energy has flowed significant, high-pressure gas to surface from the Basal Wagina formation, a secondary target at its multi-target West Erregulla-2 well in the Perth Basin, Western Australia. The company will now subdue the productive formation before drilling ahead to a depth of 4230m before running wireline logs over the entire second intermediate section to fully evaluate the potential of the Basal Wagina.

Follow-up rock chip sampling by Hammer Metals has delineated gold mineralisation over 1km of strike length at the El Questro prospect within its Malbon project in Queensland’s Mount Isa mining district. Rock chip sampling along strike from the previous 99.4 gram per tonne gold result at the prospect returned top grades of 49.9g/t gold, 8.27g/t gold, 7.24g/t gold and 6.64g/t gold.

Hawkstone Mining will generate a maiden resource estimate for its Big Sandy lithium clay project in the US later this quarter, as it winds up the comprehensive resource definition drilling campaign over the Northern Mineralised Zone at the large deposit. The latest drilling results have extended the ore system over a strike length of 850m, with mineralisation still open to the north, south and west.

Adriatic Metals has generated a maiden mineral resource estimate for the high-grade Rupice base metal deposit in central Bosnia, delineating 9.4 million tonnes grading 5.1% zinc, 3.3% lead, 1.8g/t gold, 183g/t silver, 0.6% copper and 31% barite. The company also updated the nearby Veovača resource and will now use the new estimates and ongoing technical studies to underpin a scoping study for the Vareš project.

Northern Minerals is preparing to ramp-up ore sorting, product separation and exploration initiatives for its Browns Range heavy rare earth project, near Halls Creek in the East Kimberley region of WA. The move to progress the project comes after the company received commitments for a $30 million placement priced at 6.2 cents per share split into three roughly equal tranches, the first of which is due to be received on 23 July.

Venus Metals and Rox Resources have kicked off an RC drilling campaign targeting down-plunge and along-strike extensions of high-grade gold mineralisation intersected in previous drilling at their Youanmi gold projects in WA. Drilling at the Currans Find North prospect has returned a metre result of 72.67g/t gold from 39m down-hole, within a wider zone of 3m @ 27.5g/t gold.

Ironbark Zinc is considering the potential for a high-grade development with a targeted 1Mtpa production rate and lower capital cost for its giant Citronen zinc project in Greenland. The starter project would target most of the shallow Beach Zone of the Citronen resource that is also in the measured resource category, while allowing for an expansion to the original feasibility study output of 3.3Mtpa.

Great Southern Mining is expanding its reach in northern Queensland with two applications for exploration permits that cover much of the prospective ground surrounding the high-grade Dianne copper mine. The permits cover 360 square kilometres in a known gold-copper district and provide the company with an area to carry out detailed exploration to identify similar high-grade copper deposits for follow up drill programs.

The Madagascan Government has offered to fast-track development of BlackEarth Minerals’ flagship Maniry graphite project, after a positive meeting with the country’s Minister of Mine and Strategic Resources. A German specialist industrial mineral testing outfit has also begun a program for evaluating the company’s ore concentrates for battery testing, while a Chinese institute has independently confirmed the premium quality of the project’s ores.