After months of preparation, Lycaon Resources has kicked off a highly anticipated maiden drilling campaign at the Stansmore prospect within its West Arunta project in Western Australia.
The program will target a high-priority magnetic anomaly, which the company says has the potential to be a niobium-rare earth carbonatite, an iron oxide copper-gold orebody or an intrusion-related gold deposit.
Assuming consistent ground conditions, the program is expected to take between five and eight days to complete, after which samples will be sent to a Perth laboratory for immediate analysis with a 15 to 25-day turn-around time for the results.
Earlier in the year the company received a cash boost from the WA Government’s exploration incentive scheme after picking up a $180,000 co-funding grant for drilling at the site.
Although the funding is being used to drill Stansmore, two further magnetic anomaly targets - Volt and Ion - are also in the northern part of the project area and are of interest. Stansmore is on two small exploration licences about 2km outside the main tenement. Volt and Ion are up in the northwest corner of the main licence area.
In preparation for the drilling, well regarded geophysical expert Terry Hoschke recently completed detailed geophysical modelling on Stansmore - building on an earlier review by Southern Geoscience Consultants - to improve drill position targeting for the maiden program.
The study includes reprocessing magnetic survey data and creating a 3D model of the anomaly using 200m spaced north-south lines from the publicly available studies conducted in 2010. Collected at an altitude of 50m, the data provided a solid foundation for Hoschke’s analysis.
Hoschke’s model revealed the magnetic anomaly as a pipe-shaped body about 500m in diameter, starting at a depth of about 120m and dipping to the south. This is not dissimilar to other significant discoveries such as Newmont Mining’s massive eight-million-ounce Havieron gold-copper deposit in WA’s Paterson Range or Evolution Mining’s Ernst Henry copper-gold mine, also discovered in Proterozoic aged ground.
Lycaon says drilling will now focus on reaching 320m into the main magnetic anomaly looking for similar tell-tale signs.
Lycaon Resources technical director Thomas Langley said: “We will become the first explorer to drill the Stansmore magnetic anomaly below the thin cover of sand, with the aim to emulate the success of WA1 in making a major discovery in the West Arunta region. As we have seen with WA1’s and Encounter’s recent drill results in the region, this area has proven to have a very good strike rate of success in drilling regionally significant geophysical anomalies like our Stansmore target.”
Lycaon’s entire project area has seen extremely limited and only shallow exploration across the years, mainly targeting gold, copper and diamonds. In 1983, BHP Minerals drilled six shallow RAB holes, up to 12m deep, above the anomaly while exploring for diamonds.
The results identified ultrabasic rock that was possibly pyroxenite and sericitic-altered claystone but showed no signs of kimberlite, a host for diamonds – which prompted BHP to walk away. Importantly, shallow drilling did not reach the deeper magnetic anomaly, which starts at 150m depth.
Encouragingly, the shallow drilling did confirm minimal surface cover and an accessible saprolite border. Recent discoveries of significant niobium and rare earths deposits by nearby explorers WA1 Resources and Encounter Resources have highlighted the area's untapped potential given these discoveries were also made from investigating shallow covered geophysical anomalies that had never been drilled before.
The West Arunta project spans 173 square kilometres and includes the Stansmore target, the Volt and Ions targets and the leases also include the less advanced Edi, Earl and Menlo anomalies to the southeast, which all have the potential for a niobium-rare earths carbonatite or iron oxide copper-gold deposits.
With a tight register of only 53 million shares on issue, a market capitalisation of $12 million with $4.2m in the bank and the drill bit plunging into a red-hot magnetic target, it won’t take much drilling success for Lyacon to start popping up on a few radars.
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By James Pearson
