Sultan Resources is back on the trail of ultramafic nickel sulphides in the same belt as Chalice’s world class Julimar discovery after restarting aircore drilling at the Lake Grace project. 

The hunt follows the 13 holes sunk into target areas last year – including a four hole first stage program which confirmed a thrilling 2km strike of ultramafic lithology.

The zone has geological similarities with Gonneville, located on the same interpreted mobile zone, 200km to the northwest of Lake Grace.

Sultan Resources’ (ASX:SLZ) 29 hole aircore program launched in mid-December aims to confirm any lurking ultramafic rocks interpreted from magnetics and help determine the prospectivity of the region for hosting nickel sulphide deposits.

Historic exploration dating back as far as the 1960s at the Kulin Hill target has heaps of proven ultramafic rocks with evidence of nickel and cobalt bearing sulphides and copper sulphides in the drill core.

Kulin Hill is marked by an intense, some might say magnificent arcuate (shaped like a bow) magnetic anomaly which Sultan says spans ~2.6km x 0.5 to 1 km in the northern end of its licence E70/5095, where five diamond drillholes were sunk in the 1960s.

Promising pyroxene

Drilling so far has already identified some promising results.

Six holes were sunk into Target Area 2, 20km southeast of Kulin Hill, ranging from 34 to 61m in depth with the deepest ending in dark green to black, magnetic mafic rocks containing olivine, pyroxene and feldspar.

The rig then moved closer to Lake Grace at Target Area 3 where three holes were drilled before a fire ban and extreme weather paused the campaign.

Mafic granulites where we want them

The area revealed some intersections of mafic granulites, the host rocks to gold mineralisation previously drilled by Sultan at Lake Grace and the significant resources at the nearby Katanning and Tampia gold projects.

The magnetic anomaly at Target Area 3 is strongly deformed and the explorer says if it represents folded mafic granulites, it would present a highly prospective and previously unrecognised gold target.

Sultan
Sultan’s Lake Grace project is in the same mobile zone as the Julimar discovery. Pic: Sultan Resources

Drilling extends historic results

The initial four holes in the recent aircore program were sunk 2km northwest of these historic diamond holes, confirming the long strike extent of the ultramafic target tested by Sultan.

The company says the contact zones of the ultramafic rocks with the surrounding host rocks were poorly or not tested.

Sultan
The interpreted ultramafic zone at Lake Grace. Pic: Sultan Resources

Nevertheless, minor amounts of disseminated nickel sulphides were identified in the holes, which petrologists identified as immiscible liquid sulphide drops possibly similar in nature to the Skaergaard and Stillwater fields.

“Although early days in the exploration at Kulin Hill and surrounds, Sultan is highly encouraged by the broad geological similarities between the mineralised Gonneville intrusion and the mafic-ultramafic sequence at Kulin Hill,” Sultan said.

“The presence of immiscible, Ni and Co-bearing sulphide droplets is considered a key feature for the possible development of Ni-sulphide mineralisation and the scale of the Kulin Hill mafic-ultramafic sequence provides plenty of room for the development of significant accumulation(s) of Ni-sulphide minerals.

“The area is very poorly explored and Sultan intends to follow up the initial encouraging results with further drill testing and geophysical work to develop deep targets.”

Sultan says a full geochemical analysis with petrographic interpretation and possible QEMSCAN testing will be undertaken on the bottom of hole samples from the aircore program.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Sultan 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.