Public Company News

Oil explorer 88 Energy is set to get the drill bit spinning at its Hickory-1 well target on Alaska’s North Slope after the state’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission handed the company an all-important Permit to Drill. The bore is now on track to be spudded early next month and is tipped by the enterprise to hold 647 million barrels of oil within six key reservoir targets.

St George Mining has recommenced lithium exploration at its emerging WA Mount Alexander lithium pegmatite field covering 15km by 5km. Latest rock chip assays to 2.8 per cent lithium oxide and 1.26 per cent rubidium oxide build excitement for the assays from its first 23 RC drill holes, due within weeks, lithium minerals were logged in 20 of the drill holes. More drilling is set to recommence later this month.

Lindian Resources has recorded its best drill hit to date after its latest assays confirmed a 35m intercept at a whopping 3.94 per cent total rare earth oxides at its Kangankunde project in Malawi. The impressive section was part of a wider 179m intercept going 2.2 per cent TREO from surface and also included a 4m hit at a massive 7.82 per cent TREO.

WA-based producer Triangle Energy has squared away a cool $4.5 million after receiving payment for its second oil shipment to a refinery in Thailand over the December period. The shipment is part of the company’s Cliff Head joint venture with Pilot Energy which sees the duo complete production at the Cliff Head oil field about 270km north of Perth before mobilising it to buyers in Asia.

Surefire Resources is eyeing a rapid return to drilling at its promising Yidby Road gold prospect in WA with a drill rig locked in to start exploration later this month. 2500m of RC drilling is planned to follow up on the company’s recent discoveries at Marshall and Fender and the campaign will step out to the north and the south on both gold mineralised structures.

Quantum Graphite has completed the design of its pilot thermal energy storage and power generation system as it moves one step closer to producing long-duration energy devices at an industrial scale. The finalised design of the systems follows the company’s successful high-temperature testing in November that was introduced to mimic the conditions inside a thermal energy cell throughout its charging and discharging stages. Testing was completed alongside the operation’s project engineers, ProTherm Systems.

Test work on rare earths samples collected from ABx Group’s Deep Leads and Rubble Mound deposits in northern Tasmania have delivered Australia’s highest reported clay-hosted rare earths extraction rates with returns of up to 83 per cent. In addition, the program unearthed a wave of potential extensions to the zones’ mineralisation and the company has now mobilised a drill rig to test the newly identified zones.

Green energy metals explorer and developer Octava Minerals and its JV partner Future Metals have received an early boost from their freshly minted joint venture. Future Metals has identified broad zones of disseminated magmatic nickel-copper and platinum group elements sulphides at its Panton project that crosses into the tenement they share, Panton North, which is located in a Tier 1 nickel sulphide-PGM province in the East Kimberley region of WA.

Perth-based minerals explorer Surefire Resources has appointed as managing director a highly experienced resources executive with a 30-year career in exploration and mining. Paul Burton is a geologist with an MSc in Mineral Exploration from McGill University, Canada and was recently the MD of Tivan, formerly TNG. His experience in vanadium will be welcome at Surefire which has massive vanadium resources in WA.

St George Mining has entered into a binding agreement for an option to pick up the Woolgangie critical metals project that covers around 1200 square kilometres in the Goldfields region of WA. The company says Woolgangie is prospective for lithium, nickel-copper sulphides and ionic clay-hosted rare earths mineralisation. The package includes nine granted or in application exploration licences and extends south-west of Coolgardie and west of Kambalda.

Askari Metals has commenced a project wide mapping and sampling program across part of its Uis lithium project in Namibia after its first phase of drilling hit visible lithium in addition to tantalum and tin. The company says most of the project remains unexplored, something the current program will be looking to rectify before the company launches its second phase of drilling.

Legend Mining has declared a maiden nickel-copper-cobalt resource at its Mawson deposit in the Fraser Range that it says still has plenty of room to grow and is currently comparable to about a year’s worth of production from heavyweight Fraser Range neighbour IGO’s Nova discovery. The initial estimate clocks in at 1.45Mt at 1.14 per cent nickel, 0.74 per cent copper and 0.07 per cent cobalt.