Junior explorer DevEx Resources is making its foray into diamonds after pinpointing two areas with good potential for new discoveries in Australia’s diamond exploration “hot-spot”.
The company (ASX:DEV) has lodged eight exploration licence applications covering two areas spanning 2700 sq km south-east of the Ellendale diamond mine once owned by Kimberley Diamonds.
The landholding also lies to the south of Lucapa Diamond Company’s (ASX:LOM) Little Spring Creek prospect, where diamonds were discovered in recent drilling.
DevEx was actually looking at newly released and now publicly available data to assess the potential of the area for base metals, when it realised its potential for diamonds.
Western Australia’s Kimberley region is well known for its diamonds.
Rio Tinto’s (ASX:RIO) Argyle mine is located in the region and is one of the world’s largest suppliers of diamonds and the world’s largest supplier of natural coloured diamonds.
Argyle and Ellendale, when it was operational, accounted for one third of global annual production.
DevEx believes there is a good chance the Oscar project could host a system similar to the Ellendale mine.
“As part of this review, we reassessed what was going on at Ellendale and we noticed that there was quite a lot of clusters of these lamproites that were occurring at Ellendale,” boss Brendan Bradley told Stockhead.
Lamproites are source rocks for diamonds.
“Then we went down to this ground to the south-east of Ellendale … and we also noticed that there were lamproites down there that had similar mineralogy and therefore felt there might be the chance for a larger system in the area where we are.”
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Meanwhile, the Mount Hann project area “covers one of the most significant unresolved micro-diamond anomalies in Australia”, DevEx told investors this morning.
It produced numerous micro-diamonds from sampling by previous explorers – the sources of which are still undiscovered.
Once the applications are granted, DevEx plans to begin field work.
“It’s not a large and detailed step in that’s required here,” Mr Bradley explained.
“It’s really just taking a few extra bits of information and bringing it together for a field work program to see whether or not this holds water for us.”