Western Mines Group will use a second $220,000 award under the WA Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) to co-fund a third deep diamond drillhole to about 1500m depth at its Mulga Tank nickel-copper project in the Eastern Goldfields.
The company is targeting Perseverance-style massive sulphides and Mt Keith-style disseminated sulphide deposits following the discovery of an extensive magmatic nickel sulphide system across its Mulga Tank ultramafic complex.
The proposed diamond hole of at least 1500m is intended to test the deepest part of the complex and home in on a significant basal target indicated by a combined gravity high, magnetic high and mobile magnetotelluric (MobileMT) anomaly at the base of the intrusion. Management believes it may represent a sulphide-enriched keel or the feeder vent for the overall intrusion.
The company’s latest financial windfall comes after Western Mines last year secured the same amount through the EIS to help fund the drilling of two previous deep diamond holes.
The maximum $220,000 award will be used to drill another exciting deep hole aimed at testing some significant targets at the base of the Mulga Tank Complex following our outstanding results from the project during this year. Western Mines Group chairman Rex Turkington
The company’s target at the base of the Mulga Tank intrusion is relatively close to recent higher-grade geochemical results in the first EIS hole, with 88m at 0.44 per cent nickel and 0.015 per cent cobalt from 1212m. The deepest hole to date then yielded 96m at 0.4 per cent nickel and 0.016 per cent cobalt from 1208m, including 38m at 0.56 per cent nickel and 0.016 per cent cobalt from 1262m, with 8m at 1.11 per cent nickel and 0.018 per cent cobalt from 1270m.
Management believes it may represent Perseverance-style “cloud” sulphide. The deepest hole was a step-out, which the company described at the time as “a bit of a wildcat”, but it in fact turned out to be monumentally significant.
Not only was it the deepest hole at 1622m, but it also intersected about 1500m of high magnesium oxide meso-adcumulate dunite, with disseminated nickel sulphide mineralisation and several remobilised sulphide veinlets cumulatively through some 950m.
Additionally, it turned up three shallow oxide zones of disseminated nickel sulphides down to a depth of about 320m – a zone also reflected in previous diamond holes and which is now being tested for its open-pit potential by 22 reverse-circulation (RC) holes for about 6600m of drilling. It then went on to bore clean through the footwall of the dunite intrusive.
Importantly, it also exhibited similar geological characteristics to the two previous EIS holes situated 1.7km to the west/north-west and 1km to the west/south-west, expanding mineralisation to a whopping distance of about 4.5km across the Mulga Tank complex.
Finally, it confirmed early conclusions from previous deep holes that the dunite intrusive is not so much a lopolith, as previously thought, but more of a wedge-shaped chonolith, thick in the east and tapering to a thin margin at shallow depth in the west.
The grant procedure is a competitive application process awarded to innovative exploration drilling projects assessed against EIS criteria.
Western Mines’ next deep EIS hole, with co-funding as a reward for its string of startling discoveries, may yet prove to be a game-changer as it continues to explore the Mulga Tank dunitic complex in the Minigwal greenstone belt, east of Kalgoorlie.
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