Public Company News

Artemis Resources has fully committed to developing its West Pilbara gold assets and completing an upgrade of the strategic Radio Hill processing plant near Karratha in WA. The company will divest several non-core assets and is advancing discussions with other operators for toll treatment options through its Radio Hill plant for a number of stranded gold deposits within a suitable trucking distance.

Legend Mining has started aircore drilling over two intriguing base metal targets it located late last year at its Rockford project in the revered Fraser Range in WA. The first target at Rockford South returned results peaking at 3m @ 0.71% nickel and 0.04% cobalt from 40m down-hole. About 9.5km to the northeast, the company will target anomalous copper-zinc-silver mineralisation adjacent to an electrically conductive geophysical anomaly.

Venus Metals has delineated five prospective looking gold drilling targets from geophysical surveys completed along the under-explored Youanmi shear zone, centred 5km north of Spectrum Metals’ new Penny North discovery near the Youanmi mining centre in the Murchison region of WA. The shear zone hosts the company’s mothballed Youanmi gold mine and Spectrum’s Penny West gold project.

Metalicity Limited has used open file Government data to generate exploratory base metal targets and stake a new tenement, adjacent to the giant Admiral Bay zinc project in the Kimberley region of WA. The work interprets potential domed structural positions for the trapping of mineralised fluids, enhancing the prospectivity for mineralisation in areas nearer to the surface, than at Admiral Bay nearby.

Strike Energy has observed encouraging gas surges as it continues to depressurise its ground-breaking Jaws-1 deep coal seam gas well in the Cooper Basin, South Australia. This is consistent with the previous behaviour of the reservoir that resulted in the building desorption front in December last year. Water production rates are currently between 300 and 400 barrels per day.

King River’s decision to investigate acid processing at its giant WA Speewah vanadium- titanium-iron deposit is paying off, with a new engineering study pointing to potential big cuts in the estimated capex for the project. The company has been encouraged by the results and is on track to produce a pre-feasibility study in the September quarter for the project that houses the world’s largest vanadium deposit.

Hawkstone Mining has commenced drilling at its Big Sandy lithium clay project in Arizona state, US to follow up last year’s encouraging drill intersections and metallurgical test work results from the ore system. Best drill results included 43.8 metres grading 2,089 parts per million lithium from just 8.2m down-hole and the company recovered 95% of the lithium from clays by simple acid leaching techniques over 7 hours.

Buru Energy is cashed up, partnered up and has a glint in its eye again as it embarks on a multi-million dollar search for more oil riches in the lucrative Canning hydrocarbon basin in WA’s north. Buru is preparing to drill two production wells to increase production at its Ungani oilfield and up to four exploration wells to test promising oil prospects in the underexplored region. With $64m in the bank and Chinese firm Roc Oil riding shotgun with a $20m farm in agreement, Buru has its chip back on the board.

Tyranna Resources is continuing its determined push to extract near-term cash flow from the Eureka gold project, 50km north of Kalgoorlie. Just weeks after releasing an updated mineral resource, Tyranna has now appointed mining consultant firm Entech to work out the best way to get Eureka into production via processing through one of the many mills in the region and is also planning the next phase of exploration.

ASX-listed graphite specialist Blackearth Minerals is shooting for a high-grade target of up to 34 million tonnes at its Ianapera project in Madagascar after final assays from a trenching program produced yet more impressive results. Latest assays include 14m grading 14.0% total graphitic carbon and follow news earlier this month of a whopping 18m intersection going 22.06% TGC.

Lithium Australia has kicked off a preliminary feasibility study to evaluate the production of lithium iron phosphate battery cathode powders using mica feed material sourced from its Sadisdorf lithium-tin deposit in Germany. The study is seeking to provide supply chain security by delivering cathode materials that require neither cobalt or nickel whilst remaining competitive with batteries using standard lithium carbonate materials.

Caldius Resources does not appear to be resting on its laurels after recently announcing a 1.25 million ounce gold resource in the Pilbara with the ASX junior this week kicking off a drill program to test new targets at its highly prospective Warrawoona project. The program will test three high-priority targets from soil geochemistry that showed the largely unexplored region is still rich with potential.