Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

Strike Energy has signed a gas offtake option agreement with major chemical manufacturer CSBP for the supply of up to 100 petajoules of gas from the upcoming West Erregulla-2 well in the Perth Basin, WA. CSBP will pay a $5 million option fee to help fund the cost of drilling the well, which targets up to 1.16 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Kingia High Cliff sands and 7.2 million barrels of oil in the Jurassic Cattamarra Coal Measures.

MGC Pharmaceuticals and its research partner RMIT have been awarded a cannabis cultivation research licence from the Australian Office of Drug Control. This allows the partners to advance research on the optimisation of breeding and cultivating processes and the extraction of material to conduct pre-clinical research assessing the efficacy of medical cannabis on prostate, melanoma and other cancer cells.

Tyranna Resources has secured a mandate to progress with its plan to unlock early cash flow from its Eureka gold project near Kalgoorlie after defeating an attempt by major shareholder Central Iron Ore to replace the current management. The early mining opportunity is expected to generate a positive cash flow of about $2.6 million that the company will use to accelerate exploration at the project.

Venus Metals and Rox Resources have kicked off a 1200 metre RC drilling program targeting shallow high-grade gold mineralisation at the Currans North and Red White and Blue Middle Workings prospects of their Currans Find JV mining lease south of Youanmi, WA. The partners are also planning to carry out shallow RC drilling at the Taylor’s Reef discovery where recent work uncovered strongly gold-mineralised vein quartz.

Calidus Resources’ recent IP survey has identified a strong chargeability anomaly similar to and located immediately to the south of the 1.15 million ounce Klondyke deposit at its Warrawoona gold project in the eastern Pilbara, WA. The company said the new parallel shear highlights the potential for further growth at the project and will be drill tested in the second half of this year.

Aspire Mining’s DFS for its high-quality coking coal project has moved forward, with the Mongolian Government endorsing the company’s ore reserves for the Ovoot Early Stage Development project and approval of the Feasibility Study results expected shortly. These milestones enable Aspire to commence the relevant environmental studies, social impact studies and project management plans for the project.

Image Resources has signed sales agreements for 70,000 tonnes of zircon-rich HMC from its Boonanarring project north of Perth for three bulk shipments with Chinese offtake partner Shantou Natfort Zirconium and Titanium. The company has also received significant interest from other potential buyers for its HMC, which could indicate rising demand for the product in China.

Tyranna Resources has completed a review of a restart study that confirms the potential to generate $2.6m in positive cash flow through an early mining opportunity at its Eureka gold project near Kalgoorlie. The project is expected to have capital costs of between $600,000 and $700,000 and will mine 60,500 tonnes of ore to produce 4057 ounces of gold at a diluted grade of 2.1g/t over two months.

Coziron Resources is looking to breathe life back into its unique, high-quality, Ashburton magnetite project, with drilling planned to deliver a maiden JORC compliant resource, just 40km from CITIC’s massive Sino project. The company has identified extensive magnetite deposits at least 6km long and 1km wide at Ashburton, with encouraging analytical work that showed mass yields of magnetic iron content up to 42% and concentrate grades exceeding 67% iron.

Hawkstone Mining has outlined more high-grade lithium assays from the Big Sandy clay project in the US, including 39m @ 2,015 ppm lithium from 23m down-hole. The company is poised to accelerate its exploration and development activities at the project, following a recent oversubscribed placement for $2.4m, which will facilitate the estimation of a mineral resource and the completion of definitive metallurgical test work programs.

88 Energy Alaska-focused 88 Energy is closing in on a potential farm-out of the conventional rights at its Project Icewine in Alaska’s North Slope, with its preferred bidder scheduled to make a final decision in June. Final analysis of the HRZ shale at the same project has indicated that more than half of its large lease holding of about 528,000 acres remains prospective for unconventional oil.

Petra Capital has produced a research report comparing the value of recent M&A transactions in the junior gold sector with Perth based, ASX-listed PNG gold explorer and developer, Geopacific Resources. Geopacific is sitting on nearly 1.6 million gold ounces in PNG and has access to a wider goldfield on the Pacific island that looks to be highly prospective for the elusive yellow metal.

Novo Resources has installed a new exploration camp and has awarded an earthmoving contract for its upcoming bulk sampling and processing activities at the emerging Egina gold project located near Port Hedland, WA. The company recently undertook ground surveys and field investigations that outlined potential conglomerate-hosted and alluvial gold sites suitable for the bulk sampling operations.

Lithium Australia has outlined a maiden vanadium mineral resource for a portion of the Youanmi Complex near Sandstone, WA, that it has the option to purchase from Diversity Resources. The inferred resource of 185 million tonnes grading 0.33% vanadium pentoxide is near Venus Metals’ Youanmi vanadium project and was estimated using historical drilling completed by Australian Gold Resources back in 1999.

Neometals has released an updated DFS confirming that the production of vanadium pentoxide and ferrovanadium from its Barrambie project near Sandstone, WA, is both technically feasible and economically viable. The company will now focus on a pilot-scale evaluation of hydrometallurgical processing to recover titanium, vanadium and iron products rather than just the vanadium contained within the project’s ores.

Bellevue Gold’s deep hole drilled with the assistance of the WA Government’s exploration incentive scheme at its namesake project near Leinster, WA, has intersected visible gold below the historical Bellevue mine. The company’s own ongoing exploration program also discovered a new Viago look-alike target immediately west of the high-grade Tribune Lode.

Terrain Minerals is gearing up to complete a surface trenching program across a high-grade zone identified on its Wild Viper tenement near Leonora, WA, to follow up a rock chip sample of 4.67g/t gold returned from the 382-shear prospect in March. The exploration target is located just south of the Great Western gold mineral resource and has been interpreted to strike over more than 2.5 kilometres.

Northern Minerals has returned encouraging preliminary rare earth element results from portable XRF assaying completed on infill, extension and exploratory RC drilling samples at the Dazzler and Iceman prospects near its Browns Range operation in the East Kimberley region of WA. The company said the results also outlined a new target area just to the northwest of Iceman that is anomalous in the pathfinder element yttrium.

Lithium Australia has produced lithium iron phosphate batteries using lithium phosphate that was refined using a simple process developed in conjunction with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. The company expects batteries produced using the cheap and effective refining process to have significant advantages compared to those produced using lithium carbonate

Hawkstone Mining has appointed experienced investment banker and corporate advisor, Barnaby Egerton-Warburton, as its Non-Executive Chairman to oversee financing of the emerging Big Sandy lithium clay project in Arizona, US. He previously held executive roles in the resources sector and was most recently a Director of ioneer Limited who is developing the Rhyolite Ridge lithium-boron resource nearby in Nevada state.

Anglo Australian Resources’ infill drilling at the Mandilla South prospect of its Mandilla project near Kambalda, WA, has intersected central core of higher-grade supergene enriched gold with hits of up to 1m @ 5.59g/t gold. Drilling also confirmed the presence of primary gold mineralisation and the potential to link the Mandilla South prospect and the Mandilla East resource into a 4km long camp scale target.

Greenland Minerals has outlined major improvements at its massive Kvanefjeld project in southern Greenland, including an impressive 8% increase in rare earth recoveries to 94%, compared with its 2016 Feasibility Study metrics. The work will lead to an increase of USD$31m per annum in revenue, based on the current basket prices for REO and provide attractive margins on production, while seriously reducing OPEX costs for the project.

ASX-listed Azumah Resources has intersected narrow but exceptionally high-grade gold zones of up to 0.5m @ 168.3g/t gold from 650.5m down-hole while hunting for depth extensions to its flagship Kunche deposit in Ghana. This follows on recent confirmation of substantial gold mineralisation to 580m below the surface at the Bepkong deposit and provides geological information to guide the next phase of drilling.

Buru Energy has kicked off a flurry of drilling activity that seeks to unlock the oil and gas potential of the severely underexplored Canning Basin in northern WA. Besides two horizontal production wells that could substantially increase its oil output, the company is also preparing to drill the Yakka Munga-1 and Rafael-1 exploration wells, either of which could be game changers if they are successful.

Gold development company Calidus Resources has made substantial progress on its PFS for the flagship Warrawoona project in the eastern Pilbara region of WA, saying it on track to publish the study in July. Earlier this month, the company completed a placement of $2.16m at a premium to the market, which will provide it sufficient funding to complete the PFS in the nominated timeframe.

Novo Resources is a step closer to mine production from its Pilbara gold assets in WA this week, with a key mining lease now granted for its emerging Beatons Creek project near Nullagine, WA. The rigorous tenement approval process was underpinned by the company’s impressive mineral resource estimate of just over 900,000 ounces, with 316,000 ounces sitting in the oxide zone, which Novo will attack first.

Strike Energy is another step closer towards booking a reserve at its potentially lucrative Jaws-1, super-deep coal seam gas well in the Cooper Basin, South Australia, after re-establishing consistent gas production. The flare stack has been ignited with reservoir pressure at 425psi whilst the continued flow of water at between 450 to 500+ barrels per day confirms the good productivity of the well.

Kalia Limited’s engagement of technical expert Dr Steve Garwin to overview its Mt Tore project on Bougainville Island has paid off, with five key porphyry copper-gold and epithermal gold targets delineated. Dr Garwin identified the geochemically “fertile” nature of the region’s rocks, with the underexplored area holding potential for world-class deposits of copper-gold in the highly endowed, desirable “Pacific Ring of Fire” location.

Hawkstone Mining has generated more wide, high-grade mineralisation in separate ore horizons from diamond drilling at the Northern Mineralised Zone of its Big Sandy lithium clay project in Arizona, US. New results include 47m @ 2,130 ppm lithium from 12m down-hole and the drilling campaign has now defined continuous, thick mineralised zones over more than 600m of strike at the emerging project.

Sky and Space Global has signed a definitive agreement with Nasdaq-listed manufacturer GomSpace for up to 16 new nano-satellites to extend its IoT and M2M connectivity services over the entire globe. These nano-satellites will be delivered in two batches with the first batch of eight dispatched by the end of 2019, whilst the second optional batch could be delivered in the first half of 2020.

TNG Ltd has signed a binding agreement with Swiss global specialty chemical distributor DKSH for the offtake of all titanium dioxide products from its flagship Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the NT. The company already has a binding offtake agreement with South Korea’s Woojin for at least 60% of the project’s vanadium output and a binding term sheet with major global commodity trader Gunvor for its iron products.

The WA Government’s plan to carry out $51m in major road upgrades in the Eastern Kimberley region will directly benefit Northern Minerals’ Browns Creek heavy rare earths mine, by providing virtually year-round access to the project tenements from Halls Creek. This will also provide greater certainty for the company to ramp future production from Browns Creek, knowing the product can be transported from site on a regular basis.