These resource companies are lifting their game. Pic: via Getty Images
Mining
It’s the quarterly season again as the ASX market announcements page becomes increasingly flooded with update lodgements.
To save you the trouble of trudging through it all, we’ve wrapped up the highlights from some of the (resources) reports that caught our eye.
During the June 2023 quarter, Aura Energy completed a $10m placement and $670,000 share purchase plan to fund the front-end engineering and design, offtake and logistics plans for its flagship Tiri uranium project in Mauritania, its resource expansion program, and progressing the exploitation permit for the Häggån project.
The company also progressed offtake discussions with energy utilities supported by the continued positive sentiment towards nuclear energy whilst engaging with the Mauritanian government and partners relating to export permits and the expansion of the resource for Tiris.
Additionally, Aura has held encouraging discussions with the Swedish Government in relation to mining project approval processes and the Government’s policy to transition to 100% fossil-free energy production.
Uranium explorer and developer Basin Energy commenced a 2,000m maiden drilling program targeting the shallow Preston Creek, Aero Lake and Hourglass Lake prospects, which are deemed favourable for high-grade uranium, within its Geikie project in Canada’s Athabasca Basin.
Other activity in the quarter include adding additional mineral claims to Geikie and starting 3D inversion of North Millenium ZTEM data.
Basin also continued to engage and consult with First Nations and stakeholder groups within the exploration project areas.
High-grade rare earths assays such as 26m grading 1,201 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxides (TREO) from the final 98 holes at the newly discovered Western Zone within its Cowalinya project were the highlight of the quarter for Heavy Rare Earths.
The company also engaged a resource consultant to update resources from the current resource of 28Mt at 625 ppm TREO and estimate an Exploration Target for the project whilst completing diagnostic leach test work to support the design of a metallurgical flow sheet.
Additionally, a reconnaissance visit to the Duke REE project identified an extensive area for systematic first pass exploration and a new REE exploration tenement was granted in WA.
Matsa saw strong gold intercepts such as 14m at 3.4g/t gold and 11m at 3.8g/t gold from RC drilling at the Fortitude North prospect within its flagship Lake Carey project in Western Australia.
Meanwhile, the Devon joint venture completed an updated Scoping Study on the potential restart of mining at the Devon open pit showing results such as a cash flow surplus of up to $50m over 16 months from the production of 39,000oz of gold at an all-in cash cost of $1,613/oz.
During the quarter, the company also added 45,000oz of gold to the Red October resource and 4,000oz to Devon – taking the total Lake Carey resource up to 936,000oz while drilling at the Devon Pit returned assays such as 1m at 18.7g/t gold and 4m at 2.7g/t gold.
In Thailand, completed ground magnetic and radiometric surveys at Kanchanaburi and Phang Nga highlighted new drill targets while progress continues to be made on select tenements for granting and drilling approvals for lithium exploration.
Norwest’s drilling at the Arunta West REE-lithium project intersected wide intervals of saprolitic and paleochannel clays along the 3km REE anomaly with early pXRF analysis indicating a strong association between the Bitter Springs clays and elevated REE.
Meanwhile, hole AWAC018 drilled about 25km to twin a historical hole that assayed REEs intersected paleochannel clays from 20m depth in an area that is deemed to be highly prospective for critical minerals.
At the Bali copper project, the company mapped multiple copper-rich vein structures extending a total of 3.2km with rock chip samples returning an average of 19% copper across the Deep South and Conglomerate prospects.
At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Aura Energy, Basin Energy, Heavy Rare Earths, Matsa Resources and Norwest Minerals are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.
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