Matt Birney

RC drilling at Surefire Resources' Victory Bore deposit in WA’s Mid West region has returned a host of broad vanadium intercepts with widths of up to 92m at 0.41 per cent vanadium pentoxide. The company says the probe has led to the discovery of three parallel mineralised lodes which it believes could bolster its already massive 151 million tonnes mineral resource once additional drilling and modelling is complete.

Mineral explorer Godolphin Resources has strengthened its burgeoning rare earths portfolio with the acquisition of two exploration licences in New South Wales and Queensland. The company picked up the ground after sifting through publicly available geological data and says it could commence boots on the ground exploration as early as January 2023.

Aruma Resources has more than quadrupled the greenstone belt width at its Salmon Guns gold project near Esperance to more than three kilometres and will vector in on new drill targets with an aeria

Askari Metals has encountered visible lithium mineralisation from the first phase of drilling at its Uis lithium project in Namibia in addition to intersecting tantalum and tin in the site’s pegmatites. The company has just wrapped up its first drill campaign at the African operation where it completed 59 RC holes for 3017m as part of an overall 10,000m program set to recommence in February next year.

Unlike traditional participants in the energy technology space Quantum Graphite plans to extract value from its Uley mine in South Australia through the development of heat cells that could ultimately replace coal in thermal power plants. The work stream is all part of a 50-50 joint venture agreement with Melbourne-based Sunlands Company that will see the duo establish a major downstream energy business.

ASX-listed PolarX is firing up the drill rigs in the snow-covered Nevada mountains on the hunt for some US Christmas gold to ring in the new year at its Star Canyon prospect.

High grade mineral strikes have buoyed West Australian explorer Allup Silica with assays revealing an average raw material surface grade of 98.8 per cent silicon dioxide at the company’s Sparkler C

With an ever-increasing spotlight shining on rare earths, a former sleepy tourist town on the WA south coast could be on the cusp of becoming the next epicentre of a rare earths mineral boom. One of the major attractions of the area is the discovery of “clay-hosted” rare earths which, unlike their hard rock counterparts, can be considerably easier to mine – and they can exist in vast quantities.

Horizon Minerals' spin-off Richmond Vanadium Technology has joined the ASX following a successful $25m initial public offering as it presses ahead with a bankable feasibility study to open a potentially world-class battery metals mine in northern Queensland. Some 62.5 million shares were issued under the IPO at 40c a pop, including to eligible Horizon shareholders.

Godolphin Resources has used a 5-hole diamond drilling campaign to light up rare earths mineralisation at its Narraburra project in NSW that will ultimately flow into a new year resource update. Significant intercepts include 2m at 1238 parts per million total rare earth oxides from 15m and on the back of the latest results the company believes a much larger rare earths system may be on offer given the strikes were acquired outside of the site’s known mineralisation.

ASX-listed biotech Radiopharm Theranostics has been buoyed by positive data generated by one of the company’s products in imaging an aggressive and deadly type of breast cancer, with company management describing the results as “outstanding”. The data relates to Radiopharm’s RAD201 treatment and is included in an article in the latest edition of a prestigious European medical journal.

First-pass RC drilling by joint venture DiscovEx Resources and Carnaby Resources at its Shamrock prospect, part of the Greater Duchess project near Mt Isa in Queensland has unearthed a more than 750m long corridor of copper-gold sulphide mineralisation. Headline strikes from the 8-hole, 1888m campaign include 4m at 1.5 per cent copper inside of a broader 7m hit going 1.1 per cent from 76m.

Galan Lithium will gain full control of the Greenbushes South lithium project on the edge of the world class Greenbushes Lithium Mine after shaking hands on a $3 million purchase of joint venture p

RC drilling at Novo Resources’ Milburn nickel-copper-gold target near Karratha in WA has returned a swag of anomalous copper hits including 3m at 0.59 per cent from 94m, inside of a broader 13m intercept grading 0.39 per cent from 92m. The operation is adjacent to Artemis Resources’ Carlow Castle project where earlier this year the company outlined a 14.3 million tonne inferred resource going 0.4 per cent for 53,000 tonnes of contained copper.

ASX-listed Pilbara iron ore explorer CZR Resources has boosted the mineral resource at its Robe Mesa project in the shadow of a prolific Rio Tinto mine precinct by 20 per cent to 45.2 million tonne

Lindian Resources says its first assays from a maiden drill campaign at the company’s Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi are due this month with one quarter of its RC and diamond drill program completed. The explorer is currently undertaking phase 1 of its 12,500m resource definition drilling operation including 10,000m of RC drilling and a further 2500m of diamond drilling to test mineralisation to a depth of 300m. The 44-hole campaign includes two RC rigs and one diamond drill rig.

Mining software supplier K2fly has secured a three-year deal worth more than $1 million with British-based multinational Anglo American for its Resource Disclosure solution. The deal is the Subiaco-based company’s first with the global miner but just the latest in a raft of tier 1 mining companies K2fly has captured in recent weeks.

Amidst new legislation aiming at curbing surging energy prices on the east coast, Empire Energy’s Beetaloo sub-basin gas assets in the Northern Territory have been made exempt from a temporary domestic price cap of $12 a gigajoule. The 12-month ceiling targets producers with new domestic wholesale gas contracts, however the directive only applies to in-operation gas fields – leaving Empire’s undeveloped holdings unaffected.

Amidst an alarming shortfall in domestic gas supplies, Empire Energy is powering ahead with its Beetaloo Sub-basin appraisal program in the NT – a campaign it says is the most active in the zone’s history. The work follows a recent report by the ACCC indicating Australia’s east coast will endure a gas shortage in 2023 and the regulator is now concerned the commodity’s already high price could jump even higher.

St George Mining has entered a memorandum of understanding with global battery giant SVOLT Energy Technology to collaborate on lithium projects including the explorer’s Mt Alexander operation near Leonora in Western Australia. The agreement establishes a framework for St George and SVOLT to negotiate and consider entering a range of commercial transactions for investment and offtake opportunities relating to lithium projects in Australia.

Battery metals producer Neometals has put pen to paper to bring global engineering firm and joint venture partner SMS Group onboard with a 50 per cent stake in its battery recycling IP to accelerat

Panther Metals’ latest diamond drilling campaign has delivered new gold lodes and extended mineralisation at its Burtville East gold project it outside of Laverton in WA. One of the best results was a 14.6m strike at 2.23g/t gold from 37.4m. Another diamond drill core contained visible gold returns inside a 0.3m hit at 21.4g/t gold from 48.4 metres from outside the project’s existing mineralisation.

After locking onto two new nickel-copper-PGE targets in WA’s South West the JV between Chalice Mining and Venture Minerals is ready to take its exploration to the next stage with surveys and a sampling program. The duo’s South West project hosts the Thor prospect, a 20km long magnetic anomaly containing multiple electro-magnetic targets which is giving Chalice a sense of deja vu.

Meeka Metals has recorded more shallow gold hits outside the defined mineral resource on the western flank of the company’s Turnberry deposit that forms part of its greater Murchison gold project. Turnberry currently has a resource of 11.3 million tonnes grading 1.7g/t for 610,000 ounces of gold with an update scheduled before the end of the year.

Ora Banda Mining has extended mineralisation of its Riverina gold system by more than 100m to the south and 100m vertically with the deposit remaining open in all directions following positive assay results. The company has completed 46 diamond drill holes for a total of 13,046m at the site near Kalgoorlie as Ora Banda explores the system for underground mining potential. The success has encouraged the company to expand the program to 54 holes for a total of 15,331m.

ASX-listed 88 Energy has sealed a rig contract agreement with Nordic-Calista to use one of the company’s rigs to launch drilling operations at its Hickory-1 oil exploration well on Alaska’s North Slope next year. The well is on course to be spudded by March and has been devised to test half a dozen key reservoir targets which could yield 647 million barrels of oil.

ASX-listed Legend Mining has benefited from a financial windfall after the company received a refund from the Australian Taxation Office to the tune of $2.93 million including a research and development claim. The early Christmas bonus will be more than enough to cover the cost of a recent 3D seismic survey of its Octagonal prospect that forms part of its greater Rockford project in the Fraser Range.

White Cliff Minerals has polished off a high-resolution magnetic and radiometric survey at its Yinnetharra lithium and rare earths project about 100km northeast of Gascoyne Junction in WA. The operation is within earshot of several high-profile plays including Hastings Technology Metals’ world-class Yangibana rare earths acreage and Arrow Minerals’ emerging Reid Well prospect where rock chip sampling returned grades of up to 3.77 per cent lithium oxide.

West Perth-based minerals explorer Terrain Minerals has added a new commodity of interest to its Smokebush gold exploration project in Western Australia’s Mid West – lithium. Terrain has identified up to 20 pegmatite structures to date in a so-called “Goldilocks zone” for potential lithium mineralisation. Rock chip samples have been sent to a laboratory and results are expected in February.

Askari Metals has signed a binding heads of agreement with Earth Dimensions Consulting to acquire an 80 per cent interest in a lithium prospective tenement near the town of Uis in Namibia, southwest Africa. The tenure is peppered with visible spodumene mineralisation on its surface with previous rock chip assays delivering high-grade results of up to 3.2 per cent lithium oxide, 663 ppm tantalum and 1640 ppm rubidium.

Australia currently leads the globe in terms of lithium production and according to Geoscience Australia about 95 per cent of Australia’s lithium resources are found within just five deposits and all are in WA. The renowned Greenbushes mine, 200km south of Perth, is the undisputed king when it comes to contained amounts of lithium and grade. The next two deposits on the leaderboard, Pilgangoora and Wodgina, both belong to the Pilbara, an area that is again a hotbed of exploration and discovery.

Terrain Minerals is now the sole owner of the Smokebush tenements in WA’s Mid West after mopping up the remaining 20 per cent interest of the gold-bearing ground from a private vendor. The company has been systematically exploring the zone since entering a farm-in and joint-venture deal in 2019 posting several solid intersections since then including 3m at 4.86 grams per tonne gold.