Western Mines Group (ASX: WMG) has hit almost 500m at 0.29 per cent nickel in the top 600m of its first deep diamond drillhole of the year at its Mulga Tank project in Western Australia, while testing a conductive MobileMT anomaly around about 1160m below surface.
The hole also sought to explore the basal contact of the company’s intriguing Mulga Tank dunite intrusive and the potential of the complex to host a sulphide-enriched keel in its deepest part. The almost vertical drillhole into the project in the remote Minigwal Greenstone Belt in WA’s Eastern Goldfields is the third drilled with 50 per cent funding assistance through the State Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme.
The hole attained a downhole depth of 1722m – the deepest put into the project to date. Initial assays received from the top 600m of the hole highlight the existence of almost continuous disseminated nickel mineralisation with elevated nickel and sulphur, along with highly-anomalous copper and platinum group elements (PGE).
A 494m intercept, between 108m and 602m, assayed 0.29 per cent nickel with 135 parts per million cobalt, 74ppm copper and 20 parts per billion combined platinum and palladium, providing strong evidence for an extensive magmatic nickel sulphide mineral system with several higher-grade intersections within the overall broad background of mineralisation.
Better nickel intercepts along the 494m interval include 58m at 0.34 per cent nickel from 204m including 8m at 0.48 per cent from 210m and another 10m at 0.4 per cent in the upper “disseminated” zone. There was also a deeper hit of 19m at 0.44 per cent nickel from 378m including 8m at 0.54 per cent from 389m.
It also includes 1m at 1.56 per cent nickel between 395m and 396m, which management says confirms the remobilised nickel sulphide veining observed in the core. A final deeper zone was identified comprising 10m at 0.38 per cent nickel from 568m.
A cumulative 112kg bulk sample of the drill core was taken from four intervals totalling 62m down hole length and submitted for initial metallurgical testwork. It averaged 0.33% Ni and 140ppm Co with S:Ni of 1.1. Encouragingly, these results approximately match the higher-grade core zone of the Mulga Tank JORC Exploration Target and so will hopefully provide a representative sample for this preliminary first stage of work.
Western Mines Group Managing Director Dr Caedmon Marriott
In addition to its remarkable run of almost continuous mineralisation, the latest Mulga Tank hole also served to infill the drilling pattern and with its large-diameter HQ core, provided a good bulk sample for metallurgical testwork. The sample has already been subjected to initial preparation and grind establishment work and is moving onto flotation testing, with results expected in the next four to six weeks.
The company says its geochemical characterisation shows high magnesium oxide adcumulate dunite averaging 48.4 per cent and 0.42 per cent alumina through 519m downhole, painting a picture of what it calls “a hot dynamic system”.
Visual observation and core logging shows the strongest evidence to date for the system to host a massive sulphide component, containing frequent sulphide veining and several zones of large sulphide segregations. The observations continue to validate the company’s assumptions, exploration interpretation and modelling.
There are still more sample results representing more than 1000m yet to come from the hole, meaning only about the top third of its story has been told to date.
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