Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

Estrella Resources has secured a prized position in what is emerging as a new mineral frontier after the Timor-Leste Government granted the company three highly-prospective new mining concessions. The acquisition of the concessions gives the company access to an area of 121.5 square kilometres in a region known to host more than 200 mineral occurrences including gold, copper, manganese, silver and chromite.

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.

Horizon Minerals has revealed details about its pathway to gold production and a longer-term project pipeline relating to four of the company’s extensive suite of projects, mostly within about 35kms of Kalgoorlie. The details provide a snapshot on the company’s ramp-up work, including bringing on the underground operations at Cannon and Penny’s Find and its open-pit developments at Kalpini and Boorara.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears profiled ASX runner is… Plenti Group. Its shares more than doubled this week to join fellow runners Intelicare, Euro Manganese and LBT Innovations.

Gold Mountain has applied for 57 exploration licences enclosing more than 100,000 hectares of rare earths terrain in Brazil ¬– and the ground sits right next to a major inferred 510.3-million-tonnes-resource. The company’s new “Down Under” project in the State of Bahia is partly contiguous with Brazilian Rare Earths’ tenure and a resource with an overall grade of 1513ppm total rare earth oxides.

Lindian Resources is assessing a low-cost trial mining campaign planned for early next year at its Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi, while a process plant tender package is also being finalised. Mined material will be stockpiled, with the results of the trial set to be used to assess drill and blast fragmentation requirements, in addition to material handling productivity.

The first $4.7 million chapter has been written in Auric Mining’s remarkable money story at its humble Jeffreys Find gold mine near Norseman in Western Australia that many others would have ignored. Auric has produced more than 9700 ounces during two mining campaigns with joint venture partner BML Ventures, returning a total gold revenue of $29.28 million for the first stage of the two-year project.

Twigger’s Tales (Aka Argonaut’s deputy chair Liam Twigger) talks about the academic thrashing given to the methodologies used by the institution that many have used to make multi-million-dollar investments in far flung mining jurisdictions. He poses the question – who should we believe when assessing “in-country” jurisdictional risk when investing?

Strickland Metals says it has stretched its Marwari gold discovery by 400m to establish a total strike length of 1.1km following a systematic drilling campaign within its Yandal East project in Western Australia. And the company says its geophysical modelling has identified a further six promising “lookalike” targets in close proximity to the Marwari and Chetak deposits in the State’s Western Desert.

Horizon Minerals has set off on a lithium hunt through its gold-bearing Western Australian tenements after generating new exploration targets in the Goldfields and near the world-renowned Greenbushes project in the State’s South West region. The company says it has been encouraged by its results to date, but more work is now planned as it looks to broaden its operations.

Venture Minerals has produced what it says are exceptional assays of up to almost 7400 parts per million total rare earth oxides in a maiden 25-hole RC drilling program at its new Jupiter target in Western Australia’s Mid West region. Results reveal a remarkable consistency in multiple intercepts of between 12m and 32m thick and ranging on average between 2000ppm and 2500ppm TREO.

Galan Lithium says it has received several partnership approaches for offtake and strategic financing for the second-phase development of its Hombre Muerto West lithium brine project in Argentina. The interest follows a phase-one offtake and financing agreement with mining giant Glencore, with management saying the volume of direct enquiries highlights the strength of the long-term lithium market.

GreenTech Metals has revealed West Pilbara pegmatite intersections up to 24.6m thick in a maiden diamond drillhole that reached down to 810.2m at its Osborne joint venture lithium project … with more holes still to come. The company believes its highlight hit from 674m downhole could represent a down-dip extension of a mapped pegmatite at surface.

White Cliff Minerals believes its Lake Johnston South project is highly-prospective for spodumene-bearing pegmatites following a review into the operation west of Norseman in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. Lake Johnston South consists of 13 exploration licenses totalling 1874 square kilometres adjacent to and along strike from recent large-scale discoveries of spodumene-bearing pegmatites by Charger Metals and TG Metals.

Bookbuilds and Banter with Boz (aka Shaw and Partner’s WA State manager Davide Bosio) takes an early dive into the Christmas spirit to look into the annual ASX market phenomenon known as the “Santa rally” – and why this year’s renewal might just be the present investors have been hoping to unwrap.

Image Resources is cashed-up and charging towards the next phase of its life as a mining company after today pocketing $22 million from the final shipment of mineral sands from its Boonanarring project in Western Australia. The company says its coffers have been boosted to about $50 million and it is preparing to use the funds on a basket of highly-prospective projects.

The State Government has thrown its financial grunt in behind Infinity Mining’s diamond drilling program at the company’s Tambourah South lithium project, with a $149,675 Exploration Incentive Scheme grant. Infinity will fund the balance of the $299,350 program, which will see the drilling of two NQ-diameter diamond holes to depths of up to 300m to evaluate the geology under the project’s pegmatite swarm.

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.

Aruma Resources has unveiled a swag of potential targets to follow up for gold and polymetallic mineralisation in the latest soil-sampling results from its Saltwater play in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. Sampling across three prospects at the Saltwater project has reaffirmed its potential as being a multi-commodity play for gold and base metals.

Meeka Metals has thrown-up stellar shallow, high-grade gold infill drill hits, including 19m at 8.75 grams per tonne, at its 685,000-ounce Turnberry development project in Western Australia’s Murchison province. With 1.2 million gold ounces already identified at its flagship Murchison gold project, the company is pressing ahead with its submission of development plans before year’s end and updating its grade-control block model.

Terrain Minerals has kicked off a maiden air-core drilling campaign at its Larins Lane base metals-gold-silver prospect to test for what it believes could be a deposit analogous to 29Metals’ hulking Golden Grove operation in Western Australia’s Mid West region. The company plans to drill 145 holes for 2500m in two priority categories on three separate main targets and a handful of unexplained anomalies.

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.

Ora Banda Mining has added significant momentum to its drive towards producing 100,000 ounces of gold annually by 2025 after intersecting the first ore from its Riverina underground’s Main Lode, some four weeks ahead of schedule. The company expects to mine a lode grade of 10g/t gold at Riverina as part of its “Drive to 100” campaign.

Aurum Resources is set to take its gold search to a new continent after signing a binding agreement to acquire PlusOr Global, which holds the rights to earn into the Boundiali gold project in Côte d’Ivoire. The project on the southern coast of West Africa covers two contiguous granted exploration permits within Côte d’Ivoire's prospective Boundiali greenstone belt.

Quantum Graphite believes more than doubling its mill throughput up to 1.2 million tonnes a year at its Uley 2 project in South Australia will lead to improved economics, following an independent assessment. The study by Lycopodium Minerals also looks into increasing production at the operation from 55,000 dry metric tonnes of flake graphite up to a maximum of 100,000 dry metric tonnes.

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.

Following several recent divestments, Aurumin has made good its promise to home in on its 946,000-ounce Sandstone gold project in Western Australia’s Mid West region after revealing it had secured three new exploration licences. The move more than doubles the company’s presence in the central project area as it gets closer to eradicating an overhanging $6.4 million debt relating to its Sandstone acquisition last year.

American West Metals has confirmed outstanding grades of 38.2 per cent copper and 30.87 per cent zinc from geochemical sampling at the Tempest prospect that forms part of its greater Storm project in Canada. The results came from surface gossan rocks at the underexplored site, which have been mapped for more than 4km and are about 40km south of copper targets drilled earlier this year.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears profiled ASX runner is… Chariot Corporation. Its shares doubled this week to join movers including Pure Resources, Sunshine Metals and Roots Sustainable Agricultural Technologies.

Aurumin has continued to level its exploration and financial focus further on its Sandstone gold project in Western Australia after selling the iron ore rights at its Mt Dimer operation to a subsidiary of Mineral Resources. It will retain exposure through progress and royalty payments as part of a $250,000 sale to Polaris Metals for iron ore rights at four of its Mt Dimer tenements.

Strickland Metals has emerged as one of the ASX’s runners of the year, jumping 400 per cent to an 11-year high of 20 cents on Thursday, on the back of more drilling at its Marwari gold prospect near Wiluna in WA. Led by entrepreneurial boss Andrew Bray, Stickland sits as the lone gold explorer among a sea of lithium hopefuls leading this year’s ASX charge.

Chimeric Therapeutics’ mission to beat cancer with its “natural killer” therapy has hit a new high point, with test-tube studies showing a 300 per cent increase in its ability to kill the pancreatic form of the insidious disease. The company’s latest revelations also show its off-the-shelf “CLTX CAR NK” cell therapy recording a 260 per cent jump in killing ovarian cancer.