MinRex gets green light for 25 KILOMETRES of lithium drilling

MinRex is moving to start maiden lithium drilling over five project areas in East Pilbara after securing approval for an extensive 12-month program totalling 25,000m.

Following the approval of its Programme of Works by the WA Department of Mines, Industry and Safety, Resource, the company has signed a 12-month drilling contract with Foraco Australia for the program, which is expected to start in late July or early August.

MinRex Resources (ASX:MRR) is currently designing five reverse circulation drill programs across the approved PoW project areas with initial work focusing on all identified pegmatites hosting visible spodumene and lepidolite mineralisation over the northern and southern section within the Tambourah North project.

The cashed-up company has also signed a Native Title Heritage Agreement with Nyamal Corporation over the Marble Bar project areas with a heritage survey expected to start in June.

“We are pleased to have the stakeholders, cash, team, projects and now approvals in place to fast-track drilling over our key lithium assets in the eastern Pilbara battery metals hot spot,” managing director George Karageorge said.

“The Department of Mines, Industry and Safety, Resource have approved MinRex’s application to drill over five project areas which include Coondina, South Coondina, Shaw River, Tambourah North and Haystack Well Project.

“The company has also secured a highly experienced drilling company under a long term 12-month drilling contract to test extensive stacked lithium bearing pegmatites delineated over its project areas.”

Drilling contract

Foraco will initially mobilise a RC rig in late June to fast-track drilling over the Tambourah North and Shaw River pegmatites.

A second rig will be mobilised in July for drilling at the company’s Marble Bar tenements once they are granted.

MinRex has the option to contract a third RC rig if it needs to add more valuable drill metres across the wider scope of discoverable project areas.

Lithium exploration

The company has started a three-month mapping and drill target field program over Tambourah North and Shaw River.

Tambourah North is located about 200km south-southeast of Port Hedland and 80km southwest of Marble Bar.

During the geological mapping program, a series of stacked pegmatites were identified in the central-northern area of E45/4953. These vary from 50m to 280m in length with some pegmatites up to 30m in width.

First-pass RC drilling will target an area of 300m in strike by 310m in width to test these lithium-rich pegmatites along strike and at depth.

Shaw River is part of the Shaw River tin field that produced 6,585t of tin and 548t of tantalite concentrates – mostly from alluvial placer deposits – up until 1975.

Historical heavy stream sediment sampling has outlined very high-grade tin-tantalum mineralised zones with up to 42.2% tin and 3.41% tantalum within extensive pegmatite occurrences.

Field mapping by MinRex outlined extensive pegmatite dykes in the northeastern portion of current tenure area that vary from 40m to 210m in length striking in a northwestern direction within a 1,000m zone.

This article was developed in collaboration with MinRex 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.