Venture Minerals (ASX:VMS) is excited about the restart of an electromagnetic program by its joint venture partner over the Thor target, a 20km-long Julimar lookalike.

And it has good reason to feel that way given that its partner is none other than market darling Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN), which saw its shares soar after unleashing a maiden resource for the Gonneville deposit at its Julimar Project that also happens to be the largest nickel sulphide discovery globally in 20 years.

Besides testing the Thor target, the ground EM program will also test the area where the company’s airborne EM survey had delineated 13 highly conductive anomalies within the southern 6.5km of the Thor magnetic anomaly.

Chalice will follow-up any resulting bedrock conductors from the EM program with soil geochemistry to define potential drill-ready targets.

“The board is pleased to see the recommencement of our JV partner Chalice Mining’s ground EM program, with this next phase targeting the area where Venture’s own airborne EM survey delineated 13 anomalies, suggesting the current survey is highly likely to generate further bedrock conductors and potentially high priority drill targets,” Venture managing director Andrew Radonjic said.

“What is most exciting is the opportunity this gives to Venture shareholders with Chalice potentially drilling these conductors early next year with the aim of making another Julimar discovery.”

The earlier part of the EM survey, which is part of the first stage of Chalice’s JV earn-in to the broader South West nickel-copper-platinum group element project, has already defined new EM anomalies of similar strength conductors to those that yielded wide and significant palladium intervals during the early drilling phase of the Julimar discovery.

Notably, one of these anomalies is within 10m of a previously drilled hole that intersected 86 metres of disseminated sulphides with anomalous levels of PGE mineralisation.

Should Chalice choose to drill any targets, it will need to spend $1.2m by 29 July 2022 – including $300,000 by the end of November 2021 to earn a 51% stake in the project.

It will then need to spend a further $2.5m to take its interest up to 70%.

South West project

The South West project hosts the Thor and Odin prospects is located about 240km south of Perth and is hosted within the Balingup Gneiss Complex (located within Chalice’s interpreted highly prospective West Yilgarn Nickel-Copper-PGE Province).

Thor is a 20km long Julimar lookalike (as defined by Chalice) magnetic anomaly associated with chromium rich rocks indicative of mafic-ultramafic intrusions.

Previously drilling had intersected 2.4m of massive sulphides averaging 0.5% copper, 0.05% nickel, 0.04% cobalt and anomalous gold and palladium.

Odin includes a maiden hole that intersected nickel and copper sulphides within a highly prospective mafic-ultramafic unit that extends over 10km of strike.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Venture 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.