Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

ASX-listed Horizon Minerals and its joint venture partner have taken the next major step towards developing their Richmond-Julia Creek vanadium project in north-west Queensland after fine-tuning last year’s pre-feasibility study on the proposed long-life project development. Perth-based Horizon and Richmond Vanadium Technology have now committed to a definitive feasibility study that is slated for completion next year.

ASX-listed Okapi Resources has uncovered a 2-kilometre-long lithium target from a recently completed soil program at its newly acquired Lake Johnston project 450km east of Perth in Western Australia. Lithium in soil results have graded up to 86 parts per million and bear strong similarities with nearby results recently announced by joint venture partner Charger Metals at the adjoining Mount Day project.

St George Mining has kicked off a swag of drilling at its flagship Mt Alexander project in Western Australia. Early-stage targets will be tested with a seven-hole program at the newly minted Carnac prospect and 20 high-priority infill holes will also be ploughed into St George’s Cathedrals JV with an eye to a potential resource estimate being produced.

Australian Bauxite is building on the intriguing recent discovery of rare earth element accumulations within its Tasmanian bauxite project. New assay results have significantly increased the extent and thickness of rare earths enrichment with new mineralised zones trending to the north and south. The drill rig is rapidly being upgraded in readiness for drilling the possible source rock that lies to the northeast of the high-grade zone.

ASX-listed junior explorer Askari Metals has completed its inaugural reverse circulation drilling program as it seeks to determine the prospectivity of its Burracoppin gold project in historically worked fields about 20km east of Merredin in Western Australia’s eastern Wheatbelt. The company is now waiting with anticipation on the assay results due in four to six weeks.

Things just got interesting in 88 Energy’s oil hunt at its Project Peregrine in the revered North Slope of Alaska with post-well evaluation of the Merlin-1 well demonstrating the presence of oil in three reservoirs. Results from the well have led to a targeted mean total prospective resource at the project of a whopping 1.6 billion barrels of oil. An appraisal well is now on the cards.

Superior Resources has delivered a 10m gold intercept going 2.8 g/t gold from the first hole at the Steam Engine lode, located at its Greenvale project 210km west of Townsville in Queensland. The result, in conjunction with visual observations of thick mineralised zones in other holes, has prompted the company to launch into another 5,000m of drilling aiming to grow the 122,000-ounce deposit at the Steam Engine prospect.

Perth-based miner Calidus Resources is on track to become Australia’s next gold producer. Construction at the company’s Warrawoona gold operation in the Pilbara region is now more than 50 per cent complete and Calidus is on target to deliver its first gold pour in the first half of next year, defying the challenges of labour shortages and supply disruptions.

ASX-listed Eclipse Metals is casting an eye over nearly 20 kilometres of historic drill core from its Ivittuut project in southwest Greenland as it follows up rock chip sample assays of up to 34,400 parts per million total rare earth elements.

ASX-listed central African lithium developer AVZ Minerals has completed four diamond drill holes on the Carriere de l’Este prospect at its flagship Manono hard-rock lithium and tin project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Intercepts grading up to 2.49 per cent lithium oxide have extended the known lithium and tin mineralisation over an impressive strike length of 1.2km.

St George Mining has opened up exploration on a second front and is now hunting giant copper deposits in one of WA’s most enigmatic mineral terranes – the Paterson province, home to a number of elephant sized mineral deposits. The company’s maiden drill program over its extensive tenure in the region has jagged copper sulphides in several drill holes triggering a move to deeper diamond drilling.

Lithium Australia is looking to patent the proprietary lithium battery recycling technology developed by its subsidiary, Envirostream. One of the two Australian patent applications relates to its process for recovering battery electrode material from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries. The second application encompasses the process for the selective recovery of mixed metal sulphates from a metal sulphate process liquor following leaching of mixed metal material recovered from lithium-ion batteries.

Galan Lithium is set to grow its bank balance by whopping A$50m after receiving firm commitments from institutional and sophisticated investors for a placement that will see the company fast-track exploration and development works across its Hombre Muerto West and Candales lithium brine projects in Argentina’s Salar del Hombre Muerto.

Venus Metals and joint venture partner Rox Resources have continued to rack up high-grade gold hits with infill reverse circulation drilling at their Youanmi gold project in the Murchison district of Western Australia. A cracking 17 metre interval grading 5.14 grams per tonne gold was encountered from 151 metres downhole. Management believes there is strong potential for further increases in the Resource.

Indiana Resources has continued its run of success across South Australia’s revered Gawler Craton, with regional exploration drilling on the gold-rich Labyrinth Shear turning up a new gold discovery along strike from the company’s Ariadne prospect. Better results from the Ariadne East discovery include 8 metres at 1.2 grams per tonne gold from 36m and 4m at 2.28 g/t gold from 40m down-hole.

ASX-listed Neometals’ joint venture company, Primobius GmbH, has successfully commissioned stage one of its showcase lithium-ion battery recycling demonstration plant in Germany. The joint venture company is owned 50:50 by Neometals and SMS group GmbH. The partners have developed an innovative proprietary process that focuses on recovering cobalt and other valuable materials from spent lithium batteries.

Great Southern Mining has rattled the tin for $2.5 million that will largely be funnelled into exploration at its exciting Duketon gold project about 45km north of Laverton in WA’s prolific north-eastern Goldfields. Last week the company reeled off a stellar 59m drill intersection grading 2.1 grams per tonne gold from 53m down hole at the project’s Southern Star prospect.

ASX-listed Conico has notched up a second successive round of sulphide hits as its drilling campaign motors on at the Ryberg project in Greenland. Downhole intervals of 45 metres, 32m and 27.8m of copper sulphide mineralisation have been encountered. The company believes the mineralised system is likely to be ‘fertile’ at depth and is steaming ahead with further drilling and regional geophysics.

ASX-listed minerals technology player Neometals has hailed its latest vanadium recovery pilot plant test work a resounding success. The Perth-based company says the scaled-up pilot trials produced a consistently higher than 99.5 per cent-purity vanadium pentoxide product from the processing of about 14 tonnes of vanadium-bearing steel making by-product, with average recoveries exceeding 75 per cent.

ASX-listed junior explorer Askari Metals has kicked off an initial mapping and geochemical sampling program at its “heavily under-explored” Horry copper-gold project about 90km south-west of Halls Creek in WA’s Kimberley region. The company says the Horry exploration licence area takes in a smattering of old copper and gold workings including the Western Lead gold mine and the Horry Horse and Leo copper-gold workings.

PolarX is making the most of the Alaskan summer and has already put a diamond drill rig on the ground at its high-grade Caribou Dome copper discovery north of Anchorage. The timely move into drilling has been prompted in part by the recent skyward move in the price of the lucrative red metal, which reached all-time highs of US$10,780 per tonne in early May.

Adriatic Metals has chalked up a high-grade, multi-metals hit from step-out diamond drilling at its proposed Vares silver-zinc-lead project development in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The company produced a cracking intersection near its keystone Rupice underground deposit at Vares of 21.1m at 296 g/t silver, 5.46 per cent zinc, 3.7 per cent lead, 1.22 g/t gold and 0.18 per cent copper from 338.6m depth.

ASX-listed gold developer, Classic Minerals has moved a step closer to full-scale gold production at its Kat Gap project near Southern Cross having turned the first sod in a trial mining operation. The company is targeting up to 1,000 ounces of gold initially from a bulk sample that will also provide important geological, engineering and metallurgical information prior to full-scale mining of its 93,000-ounce resource.

Bardoc Gold is crouched and ready to take that elusive leap from gold explorer to producer after the company locked in engineering group GR Engineering as preferred tenderer for the construction of a stand-alone gold processing plant at its namesake Bardoc project north of Kalgoorlie. The move follows hard on the heels of Bardoc initiating a “cash-flow optimisation” study on the multi-deposit gold project.

Torian Resources has picked up some encouraging gold sniffs from regional reconnaissance drilling at the Diorite Block section of its flagship Mt Stirling gold project about 40km north-west of Leonora in WA. The company’s reverse circulation program across Diorite produced better intersections of 1m at 4.66 g/t gold from 109m at the “Unexpected Mine” prospect and 1m at 2.19 g/t from 8m at Diorite East.

Aldoro Resources has followed up its “hole in one” late last week with a second sulphidic drill hole from the company’s Narndee base-metals project in WA. The company’s second drill hole hit 11.2m of sulphide mineralisation, including 3.9m of the elusive massive sulphides from the southern strike extensions to its VC1 electromagnetic target. The company’s maiden drill hole over the target delivered 2m of massive sulphides.

Hot on the heels of this week’s earlier announcement that Glencore has agreed to pump A$14.4m into Hot Chili in return for a 9.99 per cent equity stake, Hot Chili has surprised the market with further news that it plans to raise $40 million to move to full ownership of its massive Cortadera copper-gold deposit. Hot Chili stock soared immediately by almost 20 per cent on the news.

King River Resources says it has uncovered new, potentially gold-bearing quartz veins following an initial rock chip sampling program across its Mt Remarkable regional tenement holdings in WA. The company says the epithermal quartz veining with indications of gold mineralisation – such as adularia, malachite and oxidised sulphides – was identified in five different areas on the back of 88 rock chip grab samples collected during the first-phase helicopter reconnaissance work.

Novo Resources continues to churn out record production numbers at its Nullagine gold operations in Western Australia’s Pilbara, posting a massive 46 per cent increase above the June result. Revenue also surged 50 per cent over the previous month with 8,589 ounces of gold pumped out from the mill generating $19.2 million revenue. During the month the company also appointed Michael Spreadborough as its new executive co-chairman.

Barton Gold has put the latest phase of development work at its Tarcoola project to bed, with exploration work across the South Australian gold target including reverse circulation drilling and ground penetrating radar now wrapped up. The work program is partially funded by a grant from the South Australian government and paves the way for an accelerated development program across the historical goldfield in the months ahead.

ASX-listed Buru Energy says wireline logging at its Currajong 1 exploration oil well in the Canning Basin in the north of WA has revealed porous zones with interpreted oil saturations in one section of the well and a second section that has potential oil-bearing zones. Natural hydrogen gas has also been detected in the well that is targeting 28 million barrels of conventional oil.

Valor Resources looks to be on a roll in Canada with the budding explorer identifying a wealth of new uranium anomalies across the company’s burgeoning ground holdings in Canada’s famed Athabasca Basin. A recent radiometric survey at Hook Lake has highlighted several target zones in the northwest of the company’s tenure, alongside various new targets outside the recognised historical prospects.