Western Mines Group (ASX:WMG) has extended the mineralisation at its Mulga Tank Project in Western Australia, with phase-three drilling unlocking more broad zones of nickel sulphides.
Top hits include 188m at 0.28% nickel, 129 parts per million (ppm) cobalt, 57ppm copper and 23 parts per billion (ppb) platinum and palladium from 112m; and 173m at 0.29% nickel, 131ppm cobalt, 36ppm copper and 19ppb platinum and palladium.
Managing Director Caedmon Marriott says phase three drilling stepped out further to the south, in some cases up to 400m from prior drilling.
“This is well outside the area modelled in our JORC exploration target which was based on the phase one program – but we are still seeing nickel sulphide mineralisation and the system just keeps getting bigger,” he says.
Marriott notes the holes show good intervals of sulphide mineralisation with sulphur and associated chalcophile element results (copper and platinum group elements) and some intersections of higher grade results which may provide vectors to further pods or zones of richer material.
All holes ended in mineralisation with shallow zones of higher grade mineralisation in some holes such as 58m at 0.32% nickel, 121ppm cobalt, 23ppm copper and 2ppb platinum and palladium from 242m, including 1m at 1.20% nickel, 356ppm cobalt and 174ppm copper from 290m.
Results have now been received for 11 of the 19 phase-three reverse circulation holes drilled so far.
Western Mines, which has a market capitalisation of $18.7 million, has completed 6,002m across 19 holes of the 7,000m, 23-hole, phase-three RC program.
Marriott says that while some intervals perhaps aren’t quite as strong as those in the core of the Mulga Tank Complex, they still provide valuable information about the system.
“We’ve already found more than enough tonnes of mineralisation around the complex,” he says.
“The goals of this step-out drilling are really to find the limits of mineralisation (which we haven’t yet in this direction) and to be able to find and differentiate areas of weaker and stronger mineralisation – so we then know which areas to be selective about and focus resource definition.
“We’re continuously learning more about the Mulga Tank Complex, as these results and recent results from previous hole MTRC046 highlight. This information feeds back into our geological modelling and ongoing exploration targeting work.”
Earlier in September, Western Mines hit its “best high-grade intersection ever drilled” at Mulga Tank.
The company reported a peak hit of 193m @ 0.33% nickel and 152ppm cobalt from 107m, which included sections of higher grades up to 1.92% nickel.
Western Mines says the latest results demonstrate the system remains open to the south with all four holes showing broad intersections of disseminated nickel sulphide mineralisation.
An additional five-hole, 2,000m regional RC program has also been planned, the first to test the interpreted komatiite channels in tenement E39/2134.
The Mulga Tank Project spans 425km2 and is located 190km east-northeast of Kalgoorlie in the Eastern Goldfields Province of the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia.
The eastern Yilgarn contains major komatiite-hosted nickel deposits including Kambalda (35Mt at 3.1% nickel), Perseverance (50Mt at 2.3% nickel) and Mt Keith (643.7Mt at 0.58% nickel).
Write to Angela East at Mining.com.au
Images: Western Mines Group
