Octava Minerals is on the cusp of kicking off a soil sampling program in a bid to expand the Razorback gold prospect at its 202-square-kilometre Talga lithium-gold project, 30km east of Marble Bar in Western Australia’s Pilbara region.
Despite Razorback showing significant gold intersections in previous drilling, including 5m at 2.23 grams per tonne gold from 24m and 8m at 1.57g/t from 50m, only 700m of its interpreted 4km strike has been drilled. Moreover, the company says that nearby recent soil sampling by prospectors jagged a maximum 5.45g/t gold, accompanied by other lower-level anomalous values of 0.55g/t and 0.17g/t in the vicinity.
Razorback lies 6.5km along strike to the east of Global Lithium Resources’ Twin Veins prospect where previous drilling intersected 12m going 2.95g/t gold from 37m including 3m running 9.91g/t from 40m. Octava proposes soil sampling to check out the prospectivity of the intervening 1.9km of strike prospectivity between Razorback and the westernmost tenement boundary it shares with Global Lithium.
At its rare earths-lithium-base metals Byro project in the Gascoyne region, about 650km north of Perth, the company is following up on previous Geological Survey of WA regional soil sampling results and other reverse-circulation (RC) drilling. That work unveiled an extensive area measuring about 30km north-east/south-west and up to 15km wide, featuring anomalous rare earths, lithium and other elements including vanadium and zinc.
Management is planning a diamond-core drill program at Byro to produce enough sample material from the anomalous metals-rich Permian black shales to characterise the material and explore its mineralogy and geochemistry to inform subsequent studies on beneficiation and metal extraction. The company has already undertaken a heritage survey clearance of the proposed drilling locations and plans to kick off drilling in this year’s third quarter.
During the March quarter, Octava completed a maiden air-core (AC) drilling program in one of its two exploration licences at its 100 per cent-owned, 157sq-km Yallalong nickel and copper project, about 220km north-east of Geraldton in WA.
The ground is prospective for nickel-copper-cobalt mineralisation related to mafic-ultramafic intrusions along the Darling Fault that borders the Yilgarn Craton – similar to Chalice Mining’s Julimar nickel-copper-platinum group elements (PGE) project.
Drilling targeted several soil anomalies for those commodities, which were identified in a collaborative work program with the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation). The program resulted in 256 samples being submitted for multi-element analysis, with results highlighting several anomalous results to peak values of 586 parts per million nickel, 249ppm copper, 142ppm cobalt and 765ppm vanadium.
The company says better intercepts from the program included 4m at 249ppm copper from surface, 4m at 586ppm nickel from surface, 6m at 140ppm cobalt from 18m and 4m at 242ppm copper from 4m. It is now evaluating the data and considering its next steps for Yallalong.
But for now, Octava’s sights are firmly on the upcoming soil sampling at Razorback to check for possible westward gold continuity and the diamond drilling at Byro to see what it can shake out of those Permian black shales.
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By Doug Bright
