Basin Energy (ASX:BSN) has completed the acquisition of privately held NeoDys, a critical minerals explorer with significant landholding in Queensland.
Basin now holds 5,958km2 of exploration tenure in the Mount Isa district of northwest Queensland. The projects provide walk-up drill targets that Basin says can be rapidly and cost-effectively tested using aircore and reverse circulation drilling.
NeoDys has an existing Queensland Government Collaborative Exploration Initiative funding agreement for $150,000 available for Basin to support upcoming drilling programs.
These funds will be deployed to drill target one after soil sampling confirmed widespread anomalism with more than 600 parts per million (ppm) total rare earth oxide (TREO) with a maximum of 653ppm TREO.
Basin Managing Director Pete Moorhouse says an initial drilling campaign at the newly acquired tenement intends to target its sediment-hosted rare earth potential, before the company shifts focus to assess the paleochannel uranium opportunity, originally defined by an airborne electromagnetic survey.
“This gives Basin two maiden drill programs on district-scale opportunities within commodities that show exceptional macro thematics over the coming years,” Moorhouse says.
“The recently announced critical minerals agreement between Australia and the US heightens the strategic importance of these district scale opportunities.”
Earlier this week, the US and Australia formulated a policy framework for mining operations and the processing of critical minerals and rare earths to strengthen supply needed for commercial and defence industries.
The company also intends to conduct drilling in Q2 2026, testing the hard-rock granite-hosted rare earth elements (REE) system that returned 5m @ 1,951ppm TREO with 578 neodymium-praseodymium oxide, including 3m @ 705ppm neodymium-praseodymium oxide at a program analogous to Sybella.
Upon completion, Basin will issue 18.48 million shares, along with 15 million options and 45 million performance rights delegated over three tranches dependent on performance hurdles.
Milestones include the company achieving an intersection of more than 15m @ 1,700ppm TREO or greater than 10m @ 1,000ppm triuranium octoxide (U3O8) within 12 months from completion date.
The following tranche requires Basin to delineate a JORC-compliant resource of 500 million tonnes REE at equal or greater than 1,700ppm TREO at 200ppm neodymium-praseodymium, or 30 million pounds U3O8 at 200ppm U3O8 cut-off grade within three years.
Remaining performance rights will be issued once the company achieves a market capitalisation greater than $30 million after a consecutive 20-day trading period within the three years. Basin Energy currently has a market capitalisation of $7.61 million.
The vendor holds a 1.25% net smelter returns royalty over products from the project.
In conjunction with acquiring the Sybella-Barkly Project, the company has issued a total of 31.75 million shares at $0.025 upon completion of tranche two of the placement.
Basin Energy is a mineral explorer focused on discovering uranium and green energy metal deposits to aid the clean energy transition.
Write to Maddison Elliott at Mining.com.au
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