On the back of a promising auger drilling program and electromagnetic, or “EM” survey, West Perth-based minerals explorer Emu NL is spinning the drill bit in its maiden RC campaign at its Viper project in WA’s South West.
The program will comprise approximately 600m of shallow drilling to a maximum depth of 150m. Emu will test anomalous geochemistry and geophysics from the auger drilling and fixed loop EM survey, in addition to testing depth extensions at the historic Netty Copper mine and the high priority EM conductor west of the mine on the Netty dyke.
Viper currently comprises of a 45 square kilometre exploration licence about 8km northeast of the farming town of Jerramungup.
At the centre of the lease is the Netty mine, on the 10km-long Netty base metal trend. The mine reportedly produced 3.13 tonnes of contained copper from 30.5 tonnes of oxide and sulphide at a grade of more than 10 per cent copper in the years between 1907 and 1969.
Viper was originally a copper-nickel project but gold and platinum group elements, or “PGE” have been added to Emu’s wish list after early exploratory work.
A wide-spaced 153-auger hole drilling program that ended in March last year identified increased geochemical responses for PGE and gold in addition to nickel and copper over 3.6km of east-west strike extension of the host Netty proterozoic mafic dyke.
Results from a follow-up EM geophysical survey delineated three EM conductors of which two were co-incident with elevated nickel and copper identified from the auger geochemistry program.
Emu obviously likes what it found – not least because there has been a lack of modern exploration campaigns across the highly prospective target, save for some underground sampling in the 1980s.
It’s therefore little wonder the company has applied for another exploration lease of about 70 square kilometres to the immediate south of its existing tenure.
Emu returned to domestic exploration a couple of years ago after forays overseas and has been busy since its return.
About 200km to the north and 43km from Lake Grace lies Emu’s Graceland project where the company has spent the past two years systematically exploring the 14 square kilometre lease. Emu has an exploration licence application for this prospect.
Graceland is characterised by significant magnetic gravity anomalism, elevated nickel and copper geochemistry and numerous EM targets.
The company plans a maiden RC drilling program at Graceland early next year following a scheduled heritage survey. Emu says its drill program will test for nickel sulphide mineralisation within identified mafic-ultra mafic flows interpreted from reprocessed aeromagnetic datasets.
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By Matt Birney
