Recon drilling has spotted LCT pegmatites across almost 2km at Maggie Hays Hill. Pic: Getty Images.
Spotted: 2km-long LCT prospectivity at Intra Energy’s Maggie Hays Hill
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- Recon drilling identified LCT pegmatites with niobium across ~2km at Maggie Hays Hill
- New gold system identified
- Geochemical analysis of LCT system to be conducted
Special Report: Recon drilling has identified a potential ~2km lithium trend and widespread at Intra Energy’s Maggie Hays Hill project.
Maggie Hays Hill is in WA’s Lake Johnston Greenstone Belt where significant lithium in soil and outcrop anomalies have been identified to have similarities to TG Metals’ (ASX:TG6) nearby Burmeister spodumene discovery.
Lake Johnston is a hive of activity with another nearby spodumene lithium discovery at Charger Metals’ (ASX:CHR) Lake Johnston project and lithium mica (lepidolite) pegmatites at Mt Day, 10km to the north of Maggie Hay Hills.
Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) recently farmed-in to Lake Johnston for up to $42.5m, earning the latter up to a 75% interest in the project.
LCT pegmatites and pathfinder elements
Intra Energy’s (ASX:IEC) lithium drilling covered the 2.5km-long southern pegmatite lithium target – 1300m of which intersected multiple LCT pegmatites of up to 0.24% Li2O across 1960m of drilling that were shown to also contain elevated niobium of up to 499ppm and tantalum up to 788ppm.
The strongest lithium grades tended to occur on the boundaries of pegmatites often on the mafic wall rock contact where mineralised fluid flow was greatest.
The distribution of the lithium grade and pathfinder elements indicate a large LCT system, says IEC, and “further geochemical work is required to identify and vector towards the centre of the system”.
Only a handful of accessible targets have been tested at the southern end of the tenement and the pegmatite field extends 2km to the west, 1km to the south.
To the west there is a large coherent LCT enriched geochemical zone on the western tenement boundary; to the east, there’s an extensive swarm of pegmatite dykes that remain untested; and to the north there’s another large LCT enriched geochemical zone that remains untested.
Further work will initially focus on identifying geochemical trends to assist vectoring in on the centre of the LCT system prior to considering further reconnaissance drilling.
Gold system
A total 660m was drilled at the Northern target where a widespread low-grade gold system associated with quartz veins and enrichment in base metals was identified.
Best results include:
2 metres at 0.3 g/t gold in MHRC024 associated with a pyritic black shale
19m at 0.1 g/t gold in MHRC029 associated with quartz veining and high background copper, silver and zinc.
The Northern gold target is several hundred metres long and is associated with gold and base metal enrichment in and adjacent to quartz veins surrounded by highly altered mafic volcanic rock.
IEC considers the area highly prospective for larger-scale gold deposition and further work is being considered.
This article was developed in collaboration with Intra Energy Corp, 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.
