Andrew Duffy

American West Metals has appointed current non-executive director and 40-year mining veteran Dan Lougher as non-executive chairman of the company. Lougher has a track record of developing and operating large-scale base and precious metals assets in Australia, North America, Africa and Europe and will oversee American West as it looks to develop its potentially massive Storm copper project in Northern Canada.

Vanadium magnetite concentrate from Surefire Resources Victory Bore project will potentially be shipped to Saudi Arabia where it will be processed into vanadium-titanium-magnetite end products under a new agreement to be thrashed out between Surefire and Saudi based Ajlan & Bros Mining and Metals Company. The deal will also likely involve Ajlan investing directly into Victory Bore.

In the next Bulls N’ Bears instalment on what made stocks jump in 2023, we look at how ClearVue Technologies bucked the trend of how big share price movers were mainly companies that stare at the ground for a living. It proved that staring through solar power-generating windows can also move the market when it hit a high of 66 cents in November.

New seismic data has revealed that Triangle Energy may be sitting on a gushing 36 million barrels of oil and 535 billion cubic feet of gas as best-estimate prospective (P50) resources in the North Perth Basin. The company plans to drill-test two of its 12 new prospects that hold part of the volume, with wells kicking-off in the first half of this year.

Buxton Resources has discovered an extension to the porphyry copper-molybdenum system at its Copper Wolf project in Arizona that is not a part of the nearby JV it shares with mining giant IGO. The new “Wolverine” prospect gave up rock chip samples going as high as 14.1 per cent copper and 1160 parts per million molybdenum, suggesting the potential for a fertile porphyry system below.

In the next Bulls N’ Bears instalment on what made stocks jump in 2023, we look at Buxton Resources’ blistering start to last year with a 169 per cent share price jump on the back of graphite drill hits in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region. It went from 10.2c in early January to 27.5c the following month … and there was still more to come.

In the second Bulls N’ Bears instalment on what made stocks jump in 2023, we look at how some bonanza hits at American West Metals’ Storm Copper project in northern Canada blew up a share price gale. The company’s stock bulged from just 4.3 cents in March to hit a high of 37.5c on August 10 – a rise of more than 772 per cent.

What made share prices rise in 2023? Bulls N’ Bears will take a look in the next few days, starting with Ardea Resources. Its stock jumped 162 per cent in a busy four days during the middle of last year on the back of a mineral resource upgrade and a mammoth prefeasibility study for its Goongarrie Hub nickel-cobalt deposits in Western Australia’s Goldfields region.

Following the sale of its Mt Dimer asset, Aurumin has wasted no time in making good its promise to home in on its Sandstone gold play, with the addition of a new tenement containing three historic gold mines. The mines produced 197 tonnes grading 10.58g/t gold for 67 ounces, 376 tonnes at 27.45g/t for 331 ounces and 82 tonnes at 5.92g/t for 15 ounces, respectively.

Neometals has revealed plans for its 50 per cent-owned subsidiary Primobius to deliver a fully-integrated hydrometallurgical refinery hub to Stelco, offering recycled battery metal products to the electric vehicle market. Primobius’ option to acquire up to a 50 per cent equity in the Stelco special purpose vehicle has been extended until June 30 in 2025 to align with the fully-integrated plant offer.

Ora Banda Mining has received an early $10 million Christmas present as part of its Goldfields project farm-in agreement with Wesfarmers subsidiary Davyston Exploration – and another $16 million is on the way. Davyston will get 65 per cent of the lithium rights at the Davyhurst gold project north of Kalgoorlie, which has a drill hit of 11.1m at 1.28 per cent lithium oxide from 54m.

Reach Resources has added 16 new targets to its niobium-rare earths project in the highly-prospective Gascoyne battery metals province of Western Australia, about 260km east of Carnarvon, following soil assays. The company says a tenement-wide soils program at its Wabli Creek project threw up promising assays going 3860 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO), 2744ppm, 2425ppm, 2271ppm, 1976ppm and 1918ppm.

Aurum Resources has completed its acquisition of PlusOr Global and now officially owns ground in Africa’s Côte d’Ivoire, where historic drill hits have run as high as 1m at a massive 30.8g/t gold from 42m. The company says diamond drilling at the project is underway and 29 holes have been completed across three targets for 4592m of core, with assays due back next month.

Legend Mining says seismic reprocessing and machine learning have boosted the exploration potential of its Rockford project within Western Australia’s rugged Fraser Range, about 250km east of Kalgoorlie. The new geophysical datasets suggest a depth extension of the Mawson nickel-copper-cobalt deposit that already has an indicated resource of 860,000 tonnes at 1.34 per cent nickel, 0.88 per cent copper and 0.08 per cent cobalt.

The first look at Buru Energy’s Rafael well three-dimensional (3D) seismic cube shows data quality improvement and confirms the structure as a significant gas and condensate resource – with step-out prospectivity. Management says it can already see the reservoir and top-seal intervals in a structure similar to that mapped on historic two-dimensional data. The final volume is due by the end of February.

Lithium Universe says a study into its lithium carbonate refinery at its burgeoning Québec processing hub suggests it should produce a final lithium carbonate product grading between 99.5 and 99.9 per cent. The refinery is rated to 16,000 tonnes per annum, with an assumed feed grade of 5.5 per cent lithium oxide. Hatch has completed the study and a construction site has been selected.

Aruma Resources has produced its best rare earths grades to date from its Saltwater project near Newman in Western Australia, with rock-chip assays as high as 1777.5ppm total rare earth oxides (TREO) and soils as high as 1092.5ppm. The company says the area continues to reveal a major volcanogenic massive sulphide system hosting multi-commodity enrichment that will be tested by drilling next year.

88 Energy has expanded its footprint in Texas after agreeing to pick up an interest in Permian Basin production and development assets with best-estimate reserves of 0.68 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). The ground has nine producing wells that pumped out 6200BOE gross in 2022 – with an estimated net profit for the project of about $300,000.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has grabbed 38.5 square kilometres of highly-prospective new gold ground east of Kalgoorlie in WA – and it sits just 1800m away from shallow gold hits at its Kirgella Gift and Providence targets. The new permit has not been subjected to in-depth historic exploration, but is on a major tectonic feature that also hosts Ramelius Resources’ 1.4-million-ounce Rebecca gold project.

Reach Resources says it has seen multiple thick, stacked pegmatites in reverse-circulation (RC) cuttings within the same rock package that hosts Delta Lithium’s Malinda and Jamesons projects to the east and west. The company says it has now completed 57 RC holes for 5282m at its Morrissey Hill lithium project in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region, with the majority intersecting pegmatites.

Rock chips from Askari Metals’ 100 per cent-owned Barrow Creek rare earths and lithium project in Australia’s Northern Territory have come back as high as 11,610 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO). Other rock chips assayed at 2507ppm and 2446ppm TREO, correlating with historic rock chips that went as high as 4553ppm, 2143ppm, 1243ppm, 1235ppm and 1091ppm TREO.

Legend Mining’s mission to conquer WA’s mighty – but patience-testing – Fraser Range has taken a positive new twist, with geophysical data defining three conductors possibly related to nickel and copper. The conductors, identified during a maiden high-power fixed loop electromagnetics survey over the company’s entire “Octagonal” intrusive complex in the past three months, have positive drill intercepts with visual sulphide mineralisation identified in core.

St George Mining has delivered what it says are “groundbreaking” clay-hosted rare earths grading up to a huge 5125ppm TREO in the company’s first drilling foray into its Destiny project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. Highlights from the company’s maiden 61-hole AC program at Destiny include 30m at 1885ppm TREO and 399ppm magnetic rare earth oxides (MREO) from 20m.

Si6 Metals’ wait for new assays from drilling at its Maibele North prospect in Botswana has stepped up a notch in intensity after core and rock chips revealed strong visual copper and nickel sulphide mineralisation. The company says it has seen pentlandite, chalcopyrite and pyrrhotite sulphide concentrations – which are indicators of nickel-copper-platinum group elements mineralisation – at the prospect near the Zimbabwe border.

Empire Energy has ramped up its Carpentaria gas pilot project in the Northern Territory by acquiring AGL’s fit-for-purpose, 42-terajoule per day Rosalind Park gas plant for $2.5 million in cash. The company says the facility exceeds the standards set by its technical due diligence process and estimates the acquisition will shave a year off its pilot plant timeline and save it more than $30 million.

Lithium Universe is stepping closer to launching a definitive feasibility study on its Apollo project in Canada after expediting the engineering design for its 1-million-tonne per year lithium processing hub’s stand-alone concentrator. The plant is designed for an assumed feed grade of 1.1 per cent lithium oxide, with the output expected to be about 140,000 tonnes per annum of spodumene concentrate grading 5.5 per cent.

Si6 Metals’ latest batch of drill assays from its Dibete project in Botswana show a hole with a bumper copper grade of 13 per cent, paired with 168g/t silver in a 1m section from 29m. The eye-catching chunk was within a 6.15m section going 7.2 per cent copper and 182g/t silver from 24.85m, including 0.5m at 10.8 per cent copper and 281g/t silver.

An independent carbon capture and storage study on Buru Energy’s Canning Basin blocks has strengthened the “commercialisation pathway” for it to develop its Rafael conventional gas and condensate discovery. Buru’s subsidiary GeoVault recently found the blocks to be capable of holding significantly more carbon dioxide than Rafael is modelled to produce, supporting the company’s development strategy for the field.

Buru Energy’s wholly-owned hydrogen-chasing business 2H Resources has picked up hydrogen and helium-prospective ground in South Australia – right next to the nation’s first discovery well for the natural gas. The company is now the preferred applicant for seven petroleum and two gas exploration licences in SA, with its WA helium and hydrogen hunt expanding into six new “special prospecting authorities with an acreage option”.

Reach Resources has sprung back into drilling action at its Morrissey Hill lithium project in Western Australia’s emerging Gascoyne region to double down on the area’s pegmatite potential following phase-one drill results. Its 9000m RC program will test the extension of multiple thick, stacked lithium-bearing pegmatites at its Bonzer prospect, in addition to six of 50 undrilled pegmatite targets mapped during fieldwork.

88 Energy has revealed it will earn a 45 per cent interest in 18,500 square kilometres of onshore petroleum acreage in Namibia’s Owambo Basin as the final part of a three-stage farm-in agreement. The company’s staged entry into one of the globe’s final frontiers of petroleum jurisdictions represents a diversification from its Phoenix operation in Alaska and the chance to transition to project operator.

Javelin Minerals will acquire high-resolution aeromagnetic and radiometric data covering its Mt Ida-Ida Valley tenure near Leonora to help charge its hunt for precious and base metals, lithium and rare earths. It says much of its ground is proximate to the gold-rich Ballard Fault, Delta Lithium’s newly-discovered gold and lithium occurrences and the lithium, precious and base metals activities of St George Mining.