Miramar’s on the prowl for an iron oxide-copper-gold feast at Whaleshark

Miramar has kicked off highly anticipated co-funded diamond drilling to test for IOCG mineralisation at its Whaleshark project in Western Australia’s Ashburton region.

The program of two to three holes totalling about 1,000m, targets coincident gravity and air core copper anomalies in the ‘neck’ of the Whaleshark granite for iron oxide copper gold (IOCG) mineralisation.

Notably, half of its direct drilling costs are funded to a cap of $180,000 by the Western Australian Government under its Exploration Incentive Scheme.

IOCG deposits are highly sought after, due to their potential to be incredibly large, high-grade and easy to process.

Highlighting this, Miramar Resources (ASX:M2R) executive chairman Allan Kelly said Whaleshark had the potential to host a significant IOCG deposit, similar to Ernest Henry, Carrapateena, Prominent Hill or the recently discovered Oak Dam West deposit, which has an Exploration Target of between 500Mt and 1,700Mt grading 0.8% to 1.1% copper.

“Since commencing work at Whaleshark in mid-2021, we have defined a number of large, shallow and robust IOCG targets which have been further validated by the recent successful EIS application,” he added.

“IOCG deposits can be very large and potentially very valuable meaning exploration success at Whaleshark would have a significant positive impact on our company.”

Whaleshark project

Miramar first acquired the Whaleshark project in early 2021 and since carried out a range of work that have defined high-priority bedrock IOCG targets.

These include a a combination of MMI surface geochemical anomalism, a discrete gravity anomaly crosscut by a northwest-trending structure, strong elevated copper, cobalt, gold, silver and REE results in aircore drilling, as well as REE signatures consistent with data from the Prominent Hill IOCG deposit.

Results from the aircore drilling have compared favourably with published results from research carried out at the Prominent Hill.

This article was developed in collaboration with Miramar 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.