- Historical review highlights new targets at Marshall uranium project in world-class Athabasca Basin, Canada
- Uranium spot prices have exceeded US$73/lb
- Simultaneous exploration at Marshall and North Millennium projects planned
- Basin well-funded for next round of drilling
A review of historical geophysical datasets at Basin Energy’s 100% owned Marshall uranium project in Canada’s world-class Athabasca Basin has flagged new high priority targets for drilling.
The company considers the identification of these anomalies via the 3D inversion of historical datasets highly encouraging given that little exploration has ever been conducted on these tenements.
Plus with positive uranium market sentiment continuing to build, with Numerco now reporting the U3O8 spot price exceeding US$73/Lb, Basin (ASX:BSN) is confident it’s got the right projects in the right location to take advantage of the looming bull market.
“Combined with Basin’s recent work at North Millennium, the studies support our prospectivity analysis for this area, located within the heartland of the traditional uranium discoveries of the eastern Athabasca,” MD Pete Moorhouse said.
“With U3O8 spot prices continuing to surge, we are positioning Basin in the enviable position of having multiple top-quality exploration targets in the world’s best uranium jurisdiction.”
Immediate targets for basement hosted uranium
Minimal historical mineral exploration occurred between 1979 to 2012 at the Marshall project, and there are no known historical exploration drill holes.
Historical geophysical exploration work was limited to regional-scale airborne surveys, and small-scale airborne and ground-based electromagnetic surveys.
Multiple priority anomalies have now been flagged above and below the Athabasca unconformity in both sandstone and basement stratigraphy at Marshall.
“Basin has continued advancing the Marshall project through the reprocessing of historic geophysical data – this is a continuation of the recently updated work at North Millennium which identified a significant unconformity target,” Moorhouse said.
“The identified sandstone conductivity anomalies, with corresponding basement anomalies provide immediate targets for Athabasca unconformity and basement hosted uranium mineralisation exploration and we are very excited with the results from the review of the historical data.”
Progressing Marshall and North Millennium simultaneously
The company has now completed a review of both the Marshall and neighbouring North Millennium projects and plans to streamline exploration efforts to advance both projects simultaneously.
Electrical and electromagnetic methods are commonly used in the Athabasca region to detect subsurface geological targets often associated with uranium mineralisation.
As such, the next steps will likely include Stepwise Moving Loop Time-Domain Electromagnetic (SWML TDEM) surveys combined with Direct Current Resistivity and Induced Polarisation (DCIP) focusing on the priority areas.
This work will be completed in conjunction with the ongoing works at Basin’s Geikie project where drilling recently returned 0.27% U3O8.
This article was developed in collaboration with Basin Energy, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.