Follow-up exploration activities including field mapping and rock-chip sampling have taken off at Norwest Minerals’ Arunta West Copper-Gold Project in Western Australia.

These activities are focused on improving the definition and understanding of prospective high-value REE, lithium and IOCG anomalies as well as several copper-gold anomalies to the southwest on tenement E80/5362 before an upcoming drill program kicks off.

Norwest (ASX:NWM) says the Arunta West field activities will be followed by infill soil sampling of the lithium zone in May and a 128-hole for 6,400m aircore drilling program across the REE, IOCG, and copper-gold targets in July.

“Exciting discoveries”

“Our geological team is on site at Arunta West with mapping and rock-chip sampling underway,” NWM CEO Charles Schaus said.

“These exciting discoveries have all resulted from geochemical analysis of the ultra-low detection and fine-fraction multi-element assay soil sampling completed in 2021 across the 840km² Arunta West Project.”

Schaus added around 3,600 soil samples will be taken to infill in and around the 6km x 2km lithium anomaly in May, followed by 6,400 metres of aircore drilling across the anomalous REE, IOCG and copper-gold targets.

REE and new copper-gold anomaly

The location and geological setting of the new REE anomaly is consistent with other rare earth element projects in the Arunta region including Northern Minerals (ASX:NTU) Brown’s Range project, around 160kms southeast of Hall Creek in WA and Arafura’s (ASX:ARU) Nolans project, around 135kms west of Alice Springs in the NT.

The new copper-gold anomaly is associated with a suite of elevated elements related to iron-oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) systems on a regional structure which extents northwest through IGO tenement E80/5001.

Arunta West project area has had no systematic geochemical exploration prior to Norwest’s first pass 3000-point regional soil program completed in 2019.

Conventional soil sampling techniques analysed 33 elements and in 2021, the data was reviewed by Norwest’s consulting geochemist.

Infill and regional soil sampling grids were designed, and 6,550 soil samples were collected in mid-2021 using the fine fraction sampling and preparation method.

The samples were analysed for 48 elements including ultra-low detection (0.01 ppb) for gold with the final lab assay results reported to Norwest in early 2022.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Norwest Minerals, 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.