Middle Island kicks off NT copper-gold-base metal drilling

Middle Island Resources has kicked off its first round of drilling for the year, with three deep diamond drillholes to test three iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) targets at its Barkly “super project” in the Northern Territory.

The program entails three holes targeting depths between 600m and 650m, constituting the company’s maiden testing of the Wilma, Pebbles and Dino IOCG prospects within its Georgina project.

The Georgina ground is part of Middle Island’s Barkly super-project that encloses an extensive, non-contiguous exploration tenement area totalling about 6,918 square kilometres straddling the intersection of the Stuart and Barkly Highways at Tennant Creek in Australia’s Top End. IOCG ore deposits are important, potentially valuable and feature often big concentrations of copper, gold and uranium ores hosted by iron oxide-dominant mineral assemblages sharing a common genetic origin.

Following initial evaluation of the entire project last year, Middle Island came up with 55 initial targets. After detailed infill ground gravity surveys across eight priority targets, six of them were further infilled to 100m-by-100m instrument spacing before being advanced to prospect status.

The company says its new targets are “well-defined density anomalies”, which it interprets as consistent with the densities, size and geometry of known examples. All of the targets are “blind” in the sense that they do not outcrop and lie beneath recent surface cover and/or other post-mineralisation rock cover.

Middle Island Resources chief executive officer Roland Bartsch said: “The commencement of drilling at the Georgina Project area is exciting for the Barkly Copper-Gold Super Project, where MDI moves to the next stages of systematically testing the established substantial pipeline of drill targets, to unlock the potential of this significantly underexplored region.”

The maiden drilling targets include three IOCG targets at Wilma, Pebbles and Dino in the Georgina ground. The work will be followed by testing of three sediment-hosted copper-zinc-lead-silver (SedH) targets in the Redrock and Tumbleweed prospects in the Barkly project, east of Georgina.

Both IOCG and SedH-type priority targets are accompanied by several lower-priority options distributed throughout all of the tenement groups making up the Barkly super-project.

Within the Barkly project – east of Georgina – detailed work has focused on examining the SedH target concepts. Two of the targets exhibit linear dense horizons that enclose well-defined density anomalies – or “shoots” – which, due to their structural stratabound nature and locations near basin margin growth faults, the company says is consistent with the SedH exploration concept.

Middle Island was awarded the maximum $300,000 under two co-funding grants – to test both the IOCG and SedH concepts – under round 17 of the NT Government’s Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations program. The program is funded as part of the Resourcing the Territory initiative and is administered by the Northern Territory Geological Survey.

The company says its next round of drilling will test the Bedrock SedH prospect in the Barkly project, which received the second co-funding grant.

Middle Island will now be closely watched by the market as its drilling advances on management’s interpreted target zones, as proving a concept can get pretty exciting.

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