Matt Birney

The Northern Territory’s onshore Beetaloo basin is thought to be harbouring almost biblical-scale gas deposits and ASX-listed Empire Energy is in the vanguard of those seeking to prove its commercial viability. The company is now teeteringly close to pushing the button on an investment decision to start flowing gas commercially out of the basin – a move that could revolutionise the Australian gas industry.

American West has kicked off a maiden drill program at its Copper Warrior project, following up favourable geophysical IP anomalies and outcrop samples returning up to 3.3 per cent copper. The project is located nearby the historical Big Indian Copper Mine and along strike from Utah’s second largest operating copper mine with the current program to include 10 RC holes with initial assay results expected in 4-6 weeks.

Everest Metals has a nice problem – there is too much visible nuggetty gold in the reefs at its Revere gold project and it will turn to a bulk sampling program to get a better handle on tonnes and grade. Everest says it might be able to mine Revere courtesy of a simple mobile “Gekko” mining plant and has wrapped an exploration target around the project.

Neometals is in the crosshairs of the European Investment Bank for cornerstone debt funding of its vanadium recycling project in Finland. The EIB is the lending arm of the EU and one of the biggest providers of climate-related finance. While it does not tend to lend 100 per cent of required funding for projects, its approval could see other commercial banks come to the table.

Infinity Mining has a renewed optimism in its search for more lithium-bearing pegmatites and rare earths after positive results in the latest field program at its South Tambourah project in WA’s Pilbara region. The return of eight rock chip samples collected late last year confirm lithium mineralisation of up to 3.86 per cent lithium, 338.5 parts-per-million caesium, 174ppm niobium, 233.7ppm tantalum and 3013.5ppm rubidium.

Surefire Resources has the drill bit spinning again at its promising Yidby gold project in the Murchison district of WA’s Mid West, targeting extensions to gold mineralised intercepts of discovery holes at the project’s three main prospects. The program will also test structural targets generated from magnetic and gravity data and will comprise 24 RC holes for a total of 2800m.

A high-resolution aeromagnetic survey has identified high-priority drill targets for clay-hosted and fresh rock rare earths mineralisation at Venus Metals’ wholly-owned Marvel Loch East project in WA. Hard rock targets include a 25km long magnetic trend and a 3km zoned magnetic anomaly where previous rock chips up to 4365ppm total rare earths were discovered.

Everest Metals has achieved exceptional gold recoveries from independent gravity separation test work from its Revere gold project 90km northeast of Meekatharra. Coarse gold hand-picked from the 305 g/t gold bulk quartz vein sample accounted for 47 per cent of the recovered gold and gravity separation recovered 97 per cent of the remaining gold. The company is now planning further bulk testing and resource drilling.

Xanadu Mines has wrapped up the next two phases of its strategic partnership with Chinese copper goliath Zijin Mining, giving it access to funding for the exploration and evaluation of its Kharmagtai copper-gold project all the way up to a decision to mine. The deal will see US$35 million invested directly into the project and a 50-50 joint venture created between the parties.