First pass Peak Charles drilling yields clay-hosted REEs for Moho

First pass drilling at Moho’s Peak Charles project near Esperance, Western Australia, has proven remarkably successful with the intersection of clay-hosted rare earths mineralisation.

The 81-hole reconnaissance airhole program, which was designed to further understand the geological setting of the project area, follow up historical surface gold mineralisation and to test for clay-hosted REE mineralisation, returned significant total rare earth oxide (TREO) grades.

Notable results include 3m grading 1,134 parts per million (ppm) TREO from a down-hole depth of 50m with valuable magnet rare earth oxides (MREO) making up 20.9% of the REE content (PPAC044) and 2m at 1,220ppm TREO from 24m with 19.5% MREO content (PPAC039).

Moho Resources (ASX:MOH) adds that TREO grades of up to 1,890ppm were noted along with MREO of up to 35.3% of the TREO grade. Critical REOs of up to 41% of the TREO grade were also observed.

Significantly, all holes at Pyramid Road and the northern end of Ned’s Corner
Road that successfully drilled past the calcrete and hard clay top into the clay zone returned mineralisation of more than 300ppm TREO, which highlights the strong potential upside for further targeted drilling.

“Moho is excited by this first pass untargeted exploration program which has shown consistent high-grade clay hosted REE results,” managing director Ralph Winter said.

“Moho believes the identified target zone of 15 x 12km thus far, with further room for growth across the tenement package, puts the company in a positive position in the REE market in Australia.”

Peak Charles project

Peak Charles is a contiguous tenement package covering 874km2 about 88km northwest of Esperance which Moho had acquired from Whistlepipe Exploration in 2021.

It consists of three granted exploration licences (E74/695, E63/2162, E63/2163) and two pending exploration licence applications (E74/694and E74/766) that adjoin OD6 Metals’ Grass Patch tenements where regional reconnaissance drilling returned high-grade clay-hosted REE intercepts.

While Peak Charles was originally tested for nickel-copper sulphide and gold, the drilling has proved its potential to host large-scale, clay-hosted REE mineralisation.

Results are also pending from a 10,339 line km geophysical airborne magnetic and radiometric survey across the tenement package to refine geophysical and geochemical targets for future exploration programs.

Next steps

Moho will now plan follow-up drilling to establish the continuity of the Pyramid Road, Ned’s Corner Road and possibly the Northern Track prospects clay zones.

It will also assess and model the drill data and assay results, process and interpret the airborne geophysical data, and integrate its newly acquired datasets to identify exploration targets on the entire Peak Charles project tenement package to be tested with additional reconnaissance drilling.

This article was developed in collaboration with Moho Resources, 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.