Matt Birney

Nusantara Resources has kicked off a program of deep exploratory diamond drilling at the Puncak Selatan prospect, adjacent to its flagship Awak Mas gold resource on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. The work follows on from impressive surface trenching results and is aimed at expanding the optimised limits of the proposed Awak Mas open pit, potentially increasing the project’s mine life and economics.

Lithium Australia has mapped three swarms of outcropping lithium-rich pegmatites over a total strike length of 2.5km and widths to 50 metres at its Youanmi project near Sandstone in the Murchison region of WA. The company will use recently acquired high-resolution geophysical surveys of the region, along with its recent geological mapping program, to delineate lithium drilling targets at the broader Youanmi project.

Caravel Minerals has reported high recoveries of copper averaging 96.1% at coarse grind sizes from a metallurgical test program carried out on diamond core ore composites at its namesake project in the Wheatbelt of WA. The results eclipse the 92% recovery used in the 2016 scoping study and will now feed into the company’s updated scoping study report, which is due for release next month.

88 Energy has spudded its highly anticipated Winx-1 exploration well in Alaska’s famed “North Slope” oil province that targets a gross, best estimate, prospective resource of about 400 million barrels of oil across multiple stacked objectives, including the Nanushuk Formation, which is the primary target of the well. Winx-1 is adjacent to Oil Search’s Horseshoe discovery that hosts between 500 million and 1.2 billion barrels of oil.

Lithium Australia will carry out a preliminary study into the production of lithium-ion battery components using lithium micas sourced from its wholly-owned Sadisdorf project in Germany. This will involve the extraction of lithium phosphate utilising the company’s proprietary SiLeach process. Cassiterite mineralisation will also be processed into a saleable tin concentrate to add more value for the project.

Vonex is making solid progress towards commercialisation of its ground-breaking Oper8tor communications App with the company poised to make a “white label” version available to businesses next month. The company also plans to make the iOS and Android versions of the Oper8tor Conference app available for download in Australia in March, ahead of a commercial launch in Europe by July.

Tyranna Resources has identified a number of cobalt and base metal targets that indicate the potential for a much larger mineralised system around the historic Whale mine at its Goodsprings project near Las Vegas, Nevada. Some areas have coincident geochemical responses and are considered to be high priority targets. The company plans to carry out a drilling campaign later this year.

Calima Energy has wrapped up drilling of the second horizontal well at its Canadian Montney oil and gas play and is now preparing to complete both wells for the key production testing in early March. The rate at which the wells will be tested has been optimised to maximise the recovery of condensate and other natural gas liquids whilst providing the best estimate of the condensate yield once they are placed on long term production.

Great Southern Mining has discovered an intriguing gold/silver mineralised breccia pipe at its Rocky Ponds prospect, located near Townsville in northern Queensland. Rock chip samples up to 0.38g/t gold and 6.9g/t silver were returned from the hydrothermal intrusion. The company is now fast-tracking approvals and consents for RC and diamond drill testing at the prospect.