Matt Birney

Great Southern Mining has unearthed rock chip samples up to 1.65g/t gold and 185g/t silver during its first pass geological reconnaissance exploration program at the Edinburgh Park project, located only 25km from the revered Mt Carlton epithermal-style gold mine in northern Queensland. The company has generated a number of high priority structural targets from the campaign and is now planning an RC drilling program to test those areas.

St George Mining has outlined a significant 200m plunge extension to its nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation at its enticing Investigators prospect near Leonora in WA. A new drill hole intersection penetrated over 14 metres of massive and disseminated mineralisation from 177.5m down-hole, including an impressive 5.25m true width intercept of massive sulphides grading up to 8.8% nickel and 4.5% copper from 185m down-hole.

Aurora Labs has signed a partnership agreement with Fortescue Metals Group to explore the potential of its trailblazing 3D printing technology with a view to reducing production and operational costs in the mining and resources sector. Aurora’s ability to essentially “print” replacement mechanical parts quickly and accurately using its proprietary 3D printers could reduce costs and lead times normally required to procure specialist parts.

Strike Energy is now fully funded to drill the West Erregulla-2 well in the Perth Basin and complete pilot production activities for the Jaws-1 deep coal seam gas wells after raising $13m through a share placement. The share placement also fulfils the capital raising requirement for the recommended takeover offer for UIL Energy, which will increase Strike’s exposure to the Perth Basin.

Recently processed 3D seismic data has led 88 Energy to increase its gross mean prospective resource at the Project Icewine in Alaska’s North Slope by almost 1.15 billion barrels to 2.89 billion barrels of oil. It has also allowed the company to predict where the best reservoir quality is likely to be in both the Schrader and deeper Torok sequences. The company still expects to farm-out the conventional acreage before the end of 2018.

Legend Mining has reported intriguing anomalous zinc, gold and sulphur assay results from its new Shackleton discovery, located in the revered Fraser Range region of WA. The company believes the new results bear all the geochemical fingerprints of a volcanic-hosted massive sulphide style of base metal mineralisation. The find is located only 7km northeast of the Independence Group’s Andromeda “VHMS” copper-zinc, gold and silver discovery, revealed earlier this year.

Base metal developer Galena Mining has taken the prudent step of separating its non-core exploration assets into a new entity, Metal Range Limited, so it can fully focus on developing the flagship Abra project in WA into construction during 2019. The new company will pick up the Woodlands complex, Manganese Ridge and Quartzite Well exploration prospects, which are variously mineralised with lead, zinc, copper, silver, gold and manganese.

Rare earth element developer Greenland Minerals has flagged a substantial reduction in the capital costs for civil earth works at its huge Kvanefjeld rare earth element project located on the southern tip of Greenland. An engineering review has optimised the process plant and site infrastructure ground footprint at the proposed mine, reducing the volume of material disturbance by 80% from previous estimates.

ASX listed Strike Energy has started the much-anticipated gas production phase at its Jaws-1 project wells in SA’s Cooper Basin with operations now set up for continuous gas release. Water production rates have been maintained at between 750 and 800 barrels of water per day while gas release has continued to build in both the horizontal and vertical well bores.