Announcements

Amidst new legislation aiming at curbing surging energy prices on the east coast, Empire Energy’s Beetaloo sub-basin gas assets in the Northern Territory have been made exempt from a temporary domestic price cap of $12 a gigajoule. The 12-month ceiling targets producers with new domestic wholesale gas contracts, however the directive only applies to in-operation gas fields – leaving Empire’s undeveloped holdings unaffected.

Amidst an alarming shortfall in domestic gas supplies, Empire Energy is powering ahead with its Beetaloo Sub-basin appraisal program in the NT – a campaign it says is the most active in the zone’s history. The work follows a recent report by the ACCC indicating Australia’s east coast will endure a gas shortage in 2023 and the regulator is now concerned the commodity’s already high price could jump even higher.

St George Mining has entered a memorandum of understanding with global battery giant SVOLT Energy Technology to collaborate on lithium projects including the explorer’s Mt Alexander operation near Leonora in Western Australia. The agreement establishes a framework for St George and SVOLT to negotiate and consider entering a range of commercial transactions for investment and offtake opportunities relating to lithium projects in Australia.

Battery metals producer Neometals has put pen to paper to bring global engineering firm and joint venture partner SMS Group onboard with a 50 per cent stake in its battery recycling IP to accelerat

Panther Metals’ latest diamond drilling campaign has delivered new gold lodes and extended mineralisation at its Burtville East gold project it outside of Laverton in WA. One of the best results was a 14.6m strike at 2.23g/t gold from 37.4m. Another diamond drill core contained visible gold returns inside a 0.3m hit at 21.4g/t gold from 48.4 metres from outside the project’s existing mineralisation.

After locking onto two new nickel-copper-PGE targets in WA’s South West the JV between Chalice Mining and Venture Minerals is ready to take its exploration to the next stage with surveys and a sampling program. The duo’s South West project hosts the Thor prospect, a 20km long magnetic anomaly containing multiple electro-magnetic targets which is giving Chalice a sense of deja vu.

Meeka Metals has recorded more shallow gold hits outside the defined mineral resource on the western flank of the company’s Turnberry deposit that forms part of its greater Murchison gold project. Turnberry currently has a resource of 11.3 million tonnes grading 1.7g/t for 610,000 ounces of gold with an update scheduled before the end of the year.

Ora Banda Mining has extended mineralisation of its Riverina gold system by more than 100m to the south and 100m vertically with the deposit remaining open in all directions following positive assay results. The company has completed 46 diamond drill holes for a total of 13,046m at the site near Kalgoorlie as Ora Banda explores the system for underground mining potential. The success has encouraged the company to expand the program to 54 holes for a total of 15,331m.

ASX-listed 88 Energy has sealed a rig contract agreement with Nordic-Calista to use one of the company’s rigs to launch drilling operations at its Hickory-1 oil exploration well on Alaska’s North Slope next year. The well is on course to be spudded by March and has been devised to test half a dozen key reservoir targets which could yield 647 million barrels of oil.

ASX-listed Legend Mining has benefited from a financial windfall after the company received a refund from the Australian Taxation Office to the tune of $2.93 million including a research and development claim. The early Christmas bonus will be more than enough to cover the cost of a recent 3D seismic survey of its Octagonal prospect that forms part of its greater Rockford project in the Fraser Range.

White Cliff Minerals has polished off a high-resolution magnetic and radiometric survey at its Yinnetharra lithium and rare earths project about 100km northeast of Gascoyne Junction in WA. The operation is within earshot of several high-profile plays including Hastings Technology Metals’ world-class Yangibana rare earths acreage and Arrow Minerals’ emerging Reid Well prospect where rock chip sampling returned grades of up to 3.77 per cent lithium oxide.

West Perth-based minerals explorer Terrain Minerals has added a new commodity of interest to its Smokebush gold exploration project in Western Australia’s Mid West – lithium. Terrain has identified up to 20 pegmatite structures to date in a so-called “Goldilocks zone” for potential lithium mineralisation. Rock chip samples have been sent to a laboratory and results are expected in February.

Askari Metals has signed a binding heads of agreement with Earth Dimensions Consulting to acquire an 80 per cent interest in a lithium prospective tenement near the town of Uis in Namibia, southwest Africa. The tenure is peppered with visible spodumene mineralisation on its surface with previous rock chip assays delivering high-grade results of up to 3.2 per cent lithium oxide, 663 ppm tantalum and 1640 ppm rubidium.

Australia currently leads the globe in terms of lithium production and according to Geoscience Australia about 95 per cent of Australia’s lithium resources are found within just five deposits and all are in WA. The renowned Greenbushes mine, 200km south of Perth, is the undisputed king when it comes to contained amounts of lithium and grade. The next two deposits on the leaderboard, Pilgangoora and Wodgina, both belong to the Pilbara, an area that is again a hotbed of exploration and discovery.

Terrain Minerals is now the sole owner of the Smokebush tenements in WA’s Mid West after mopping up the remaining 20 per cent interest of the gold-bearing ground from a private vendor. The company has been systematically exploring the zone since entering a farm-in and joint-venture deal in 2019 posting several solid intersections since then including 3m at 4.86 grams per tonne gold.

Meeka Metals has received positive results from test work at its Cascade Valley rare earths project near Esperance with up to 90.4 per cent of the elements recovered in the less than 20 micrometre fraction. The company says cheap and simple screening and hydro-cyclone classification can be applied to discard the coarse fraction greater than 20 micrometres and remove up to 65.5 per cent of the mass whilst retaining up to 90.4 per cent of the rare earth elements.

AVZ Minerals has delivered a suite of broad lithium intersections including 144.5m at 1.75 per cent from 13.5m and 172.3m going 1.57 per cent from 48.5m at its monster Manono hard-rock lithium and tin project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Four more extensional diamond drill holes have been knocked over during a probe at its centrepiece Roche Dure deposit as the company looks to bolster its battery metal inventory.

ASX-listed Empire Energy has kicked another goal in the Beetaloo sub-basin after casing and cementing the horizontal section of its Carpentaria-3H gas well in the Northern Territory in just 2 days. The play sets the asset up for a December reservoir fracking program where the company will look to harvest some of the zone’s 500 trillion cubic feet of gas.

St George Mining has entered into a memorandum of understanding with Shanghai Jayson New Energy Materials to pursue lithium business opportunities based on the potential of the explorer’s Mt Alexander project. According to the agreement, the two companies will establish a strategic partnership to consider working together on investment and offtake opportunities at Mt Alexander where St George has discovered high-grade lithium-bearing pegmatites along a 15km corridor near Leonora.

A fresh review of JV partners Triangle Energy Global and Pilot Energy’s Cliff Head oil reservoirs suggests the assets could hold 9.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – a 50 per cent increase on initial projections. The producer’s oil fields are currently pumping out roughly 700 barrels of oil each day but once exhausted the aim is to use them to store carbon produced from power generation and industrial activities.

St George Mining has secured financial support for a drill campaign at its Mt Alexander lithium project after a global battery minerals company provided a $2 million cornerstone commitment. The explorer’s recent placement received commitments of more than $7 million including $2.04 million from Shanghai Jayson New Energy Materials – a significant supplier to the emerging clean energy sector and the world’s leading producer of cathode precursor materials for lithium-ion batteries.

Newly listed explorer Octava Minerals has outlined a suite of new pegmatite targets at its Pinnacle Well lithium prospect in the Pilbara region of Western Australia after a field reconnaissance program. The campaign was headlined by the detection of a 1.5km long east-west running outcrop about 10km north of Global Lithium’s 10.5 million tonne Archer deposit.

Classic Minerals has received approval to build a key piece of infrastructure for its gold processing plant at the company’s Kat Gap project in the Goldfields with a water pipeline getting the green light. The water bore is located near the main haul road 1100m from the processing plant that will simplify the pumping process. The pipeline will be placed above ground so limited additional infrastructure will be required.

Drill testing at Meeka Metals’ Murchison gold project has intersected a new zone of shallow high-grade oxide gold at the St Anne’s deposit, prompting the company to defer its planned release of St Anne’s initial mineral resource until the March quarter next year. The company says the new discovery remains open to the north and depth and has named it the Brassie lode.

Multicommodity explorer CZR Resources is ramping up its gold hunt in the Mallina Basin, home to DeGrey’s 8.5-million-ounce gold discovery, in Western Australia’s Pilbara goldfields. The company has commenced a ground gravity survey at its Croydon project targeting intrusion-related gold mineralisation where previous drilling has unearthed 8m running at 10.2 g/t from 135m.

Mineral processing test work has confirmed the ability for Podium Minerals to produce a viable platinum group metal flotation concentrate suitable for smelter feeds from ore at its Parks Reef project. The company says additional downstream processing developments have also proven that high metal recovery of all eight metals found at the site can be achieved using atmospheric leaching.

K2fly has landed another big fish with a world-leading steel and mining multinational company signing up for two products from the Subiaco-based software provider’s Mineral Resource Governance platform. The five-year agreement with ArcelorMittal Mining UK, the mining arm of the ArcelorMittal group, is worth almost $2 million and adds to sales in the past week to tier 1 miners Rio Tinto and Mineral Resources.

Ultra-high temperature test work aimed at evaluating the suitability of ASX-listed Quantum Graphite’s coarse flake graphite in the production of long-duration energy devices has come up trumps. The program forms part of a jointly held partnership with Melbourne-based company Sunlands and aims to produce thermal energy storage battery cells at an industrial scale using Quantum’s ore as a feedstock.

Construction at Adriatic Metals’ Vares high-grade silver project in Bosnia and Herzegovina is picking up speed as the company prepares to bring the project's namesake underground mine and processing facility online next year. Adriatic says the project is now at the mid-way point and importantly remains on schedule and budget to deliver the first concentrate around September 2023.

With its Goongarrie tenements renewed for a further five years, explorer Zuleika Gold has assembled boots on ground in its hunt for gold and nickel within the company’s under-explored tenure in WA’s goldfields. The company has commenced a 740-sample soil geochemistry program designed to infill previous geochemical sampling and extend the coverage over the 20km-long prospective greenstone belt.

ASX-listed Aurumin has entered a competitive ballot process to expand its footprint around the company’s flagship Sandstone operations with a number of the 15 tenements up for grabs located in the adjacent area. The ballots in the Sandstone area are a result of compulsory partial surrenders required by Section 65 of the Mining Act 1978 and contain applications from several parties including tenements adjacent to the Central Sandstone project and north of Youanmi.

White Cliff Minerals has concluded a maiden 49-hole, 1861m air-core drilling program at its Hines Hill rare earths project in WA’s Wheatbelt region. The campaign follows the discovery of a pair of potentially mineralised magnetic features and the return of soil sample results grading up to 550 parts per million total rare earth oxides.