Peregrine takes to the skies for EM survey at Mallina

Junior explorer Peregrine Gold has kicked off an airborne electromagnetic (EM) survey at its Mallina project in the WA Pilbara.

Underexplored Mallina is 120km northeast of De Grey’s enormous Hemi deposit, and Peregrine Gold (ASX:PGD) will use the EM survey to identify potential mineralisation by identifying rock units to assist in interpreting lithology and structures.

Peregrine has engaged with Xcalibur Aviation to cover 845-line kilometres within the explorer’s huge 1,728sqkm project area, with the data acquisition expected to take ~2 weeks.

The survey areas have no outcrop and are characterised by extremely strong magnetic anomalies and strong gravity anomalies.

Historic drilling

There has been some historic drilling of these anomalies – by Brumby Resources and IGO back in 2005 intercepting 4m @ 0.23% Cu from 73-77m and 3m @ 112ppb Au+Pd+Pt from 74-77m.

Brumby went back again in 2007 and 2010 and finally hit what it called “intense” chalcopyrite and pyrite within fine grained intrusives and brecciated cherts.

Rio Tinto has also historically been sniffing around the project area. Back in 1996 it found a 0.2m section of semi-massive pyrite-pyrrhotite and chlorite from 220.2m to 220.4m in proximity to mafic-ultramafic intrusions.

Intriguingly, all those holes are concentrated over a small area on one magnetically anomalous feature.

Further to the northeast and 6km away, Rio Tinto drill hole 97DGD002 intersected a package of dolerites, gabbros and pyroxenite ultramafic rocks.

Peregrine said that results of the airborne EM survey will inform planned follow-up programmes which include ground-based surveys and drilling.

This article was developed in collaboration with Peregrine Gold, 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.