Announcements

Empire Energy Group has taken a significant step towards becoming the first gas producer from the Beetaloo Basin after inking a 10-year supply agreement with the Northern Territory Government for 25 terajoules of gas per day. The deal takes the company closer to a final investment decision on its Carpentaria pilot project and would see it supply a total 75 petajoules over a decade.

Shaw & Partners WA State manager and Bulls N’ Bears guest columnist Davide Bosio recounts his best advice to Year 10 economics students: “The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago – the second-best time is now”. Bosio gets back to financial basics as he tackles raw and unfiltered questions from Western Australian school kids.

Gold Mountain has recorded promising lithium results from a batch of stream sediment samples at its Salinas II project in Brazil’s emerging Lithium Valley. All but one of the 55 samples returned significant lithium anomalism, with the concentrations being found at the company’s Bananal Valley tenements along strike from Latin Resources’ 70 million-tonne Colina deposit.

Horizon Minerals has established a hefty gold-silver resource after completing a merger with Greenstone Resources, covering the new entity’s entire holdings in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. The company says it now boasts a resource inventory of 1.8 million ounces of gold and 20 million ounces of silver and is now poised to generate accelerated cash flow from multiple gold deposits near Kalgoorlie.

Aurumin has called in the experts to help it assess newly-found iron ore potential at its flagship Sandstone project in Western Australia’s Mid West region, in what could become a significant add-on to its gold prospects. The company has engaged Southern Geoscience to undertake modelling of the existing geophysical datasets from its past gold exploration activities in a bid to generate iron ore targets.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has tabled a maiden resource of 76,400 ounces at 1 gram per tonne gold from its Kirgella Gift and Providence deposits at its new flagship Pinjin project, 140km north-east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Management wrapped up its initial resource at Pinjin in little more than 12 months after securing the ground along the prospective Laverton Tectonic Zone in May last year.

White Cliff Minerals has unveiled extensive evidence of chalcocite-dominant, copper-rich vein systems along big strike distances after maiden field work at its Rae project in the Canadian province of Nunavut. The company has reported significant – sometimes spectacular – hard surface evidence of the red metal at its PAT, HALO, Cu-TAR, DON CALMAL and Kilauea targets, with abundant native copper observed at surface in the latter.

Buxton Resources has unveiled a game-changing find at its Graphite Bull play in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region, with new results revealing 84.6m of visible graphitic mineralisation. The hit from the company’s latest diamond drillhole includes an ultra-wide 50.35m intersection of high-grade material and once assays are confirmed for the latest results, the extent of mineralisation at depth could be doubled.

Octava Minerals is on the cusp of kicking off a soil sampling program in a bid to expand the Razorback gold prospect at its 202sq-km Talga lithium-gold project, 30km east of Marble Bar in WA’s Pilbara region. Despite Razorback showing significant gold intersections in previous drilling, including 5m at 2.23g/t from 24m, only 700m of its interpreted 4km strike has been drilled.

American West Metals has extended the high-grade Thunder copper zone at its Storm project in Canada’s Nunavut province to more than 300m after completing 66 reverse-circulation and diamond drillholes. The company has also received encouraging visible indications of mineralisation in its first 22 drillholes, with nine step-out holes exhibiting thick copper mineralisation to confirm the 300m strike extent of the target.

88 Energy’s bid to validate new oil targets in the recently-revived Owambo Basin in Namibia has taken a significant step with the completion of a major 203km 2D seismic acquisition program – on time and on budget. The company is now expecting to outline the prospective resource size and quality of the fold structures through data processing before the end of the year.

Gold Mountain has etched out a second intriguing rare earths patch at its Down Under project in Brazil, with a further 85 assays returned from a scout stream sediment survey showing values up to 4582ppm TREO. The company recently collected 800 samples in a first-pass reconnaissance program at its freshly-minted tenure – a stone’s throw from Brazilian Rare Earths’ Rocha da Rocha critical minerals province.

Toro Energy is closing in on the finalised design of a pilot plant that will allow it to test ores from three uranium-vanadium deposits at its project south-west of the WA town of Wiluna later this year. The plant will test improved beneficiation and hydrometallurgical circuits Toro has developed at near-production scale with an eye to incorporating the design flow sheet upgrade into future feasibility studies.

Quantum Graphite says its airborne geophysics have defined a new high-grade graphite zone about 2.5km long in the north-west area of its Uley 2 exploration licence on SA’s Eyre Peninsula. It comes after the company confirmed in April the completion of its helicopter-borne versatile time domain electromagnetic (VTEM) and magnetics survey that was part of its planning for Uley 2 and Uley 3 project extensions.

Strickland Metals has homed in on a powerful near-surface anomaly as part of a survey being run at the Obradov Potok prospect within its Rogozna gold and base metals project in Serbia. The preliminary induced-polarisation survey has unearthed a target that starts 100m below the surface and extends along a 400m strike length, suggesting a potentially significant new mineral deposit is taking shape.

With Mineral Resources turning a chapter and pulling the plug on its Yilgarn iron ore hub in Western Australia, the race for potential suitors vying for a look in at Esperance’s newly-released rail and port capacity is hotting up. And the star-studded list of runners and riders positioning at the starting blocks makes for some very interesting reading.

Ora Banda Mining has increased the gold production and head grade from its Davyhurst mine in Western Australia’s Goldfields region as it ramps up its mission to become a high-grade underground miner. The company today confirmed record gold-ounce production for the past quarter, fuelled by its new Riverina underground development, despite confronting considerable weather delays during the month of June.

Triangle Energy’s payoff for the sale to Pilot Energy of its Cliff Head oil asset off the coast of Western Australia now stacks up to $16 million after adjustments made to offset delays in the deal settlement. The new agreement features an extra $1 million for Triangle, which now plans to focus on its prospective conventional oil and gas activities in the Perth Basin.

Gold Mountain has defined extensive multi-element anomalism pointing to iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) and lithium potential in two areas covered by an initial 231 stream sediment samples from its Iguatu Project in Brazil. The company says it has identified clusters of broad halo-style iron and sodium anomalies and copper-gold-mercury anomalies generally associated with the more strongly-mineralised parts of Australia’s renowned Olympic Dam IOCG deposit.

Radiopharm Theranostics has been given the nod of approval by the United States Food and Drug Authority to use its brain cancer-fighting technology in late-stage trials, with a first patient expected to be dosed later this year. The company’s “F18-Pivalate” agent is designed to seek out and define a fatty acid that is overexpressed in brain tumours, but not in normal cells.

Gold Mountain has defined several new drill targets at its Down Under project in Brazil following the completion of extensive scout stream sediment sampling and 85 line kilometres of radiometric surveying. While 800 stream sediment samples have been collected to date, only 25 per cent of the results have been returned, with about 61 of them revealing strong potential for high-grade, monazite-hosted rare earths-niobium-uranium-scandium mineralisation.

Thunderbird Resources has confirmed it has settled on a drilling contractor as it prepares to launch into a new campaign next month at its Hidden Bay uranium project in northern Saskatchewan in Canada. The program at the operation that sits about 20km to the south-east of the prolific Rabbit Lake Mine, is expected to comprise five diamond drillholes for a total of about 2400m.

Mining technology business K2fly has delivered a 20 per cent boost to its annual recurring revenue, with new sales and contract renewals driving the key performance metric from $7.5 million in the fourth quarter of FY23 to $9 million in the fourth quarter of FY24. Cash receipts from customers of $4.6 million also jumped by 28 per cent during the same period.

Aurum Resources says it has obtained outstanding gold leach results exceeding 93 per cent recovery in recent metallurgical testwork on 50 samples from its Boundiali BDT1 target in Côte D’Ivoire, West Africa. Samples selected for 24-hour cyanide bottle-roll leach tests were drawn from diamond core at various stages of oxidation and across a range of gold grades expected in routine open pit mining.

In a significant move poised to bolster the immediate direction of its multi-mineral pursuits, White Cliff Minerals has secured well-known mining mogul John Hancock as a strategic advisor to its board. The company has engaged the son of Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart as it gears up for a substantial expansion of its project portfolio during the next year.

Triangle Energy’s hunt for onshore oil and gas at its Booth prospect in Western Australia’s North Perth Basin has stepped up a gear, with spudding of its Booth-1 well anticipated at the end of this month and drilling expected to begin in about 10 days. The company is targeting a vast 279 billion cubic feet resource at Booth.

Lycaon Resources has completed a crucial heritage survey for its multi-element Stansmore carbonatite project in Western Australia’s West Arunta region, marking a significant step towards drilling. The clearance relates to three priority drill targets at the company’s Stansmore, Volt and Ions targets where it is chasing niobium, rare earths and iron oxide copper-gold and it is now eyeing a drilling program later this year.

A surface rock chip sample revealing 137.7 grams per tonne gold and 10.6 per cent copper at Latitude 66's Peräpohja Schist Belt Project (PSB) project in northern Finland has provided management with a tantalising new glimpse into what treasures may lie beneath. The company says its latest results have affirmed multiple ice flow gold-copper mineralisation trends extending up to 2km.

In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the notable drill intersections revealed on the ASX, including Santana Minerals’ impressive 48m slice at 5.8g/t gold from 167.3m in New Zealand. We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week as reported by Predictive Discovery, Venture Minerals and DevEx Resources.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the Week is … the ASX itself. The ASX 200 hit an all-time high of 8083.7 points, indicating to investors that there may just be green shoots and blue skies ahead. Small-cap companies that ran hard during a promising week included DGR Global, Labyrinth Resources, Miramar Resources and Stelar Metals.

Buxton Resources’ mission to deliver battery anode concentrate material from its Graphite Bull project in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region has gained momentum after recent drilling hit multiple new zones of high-grade graphite. The company says substantial graphitic core zones are visible in the first hole from the new campaign as its confidence builds in relation to its chances of delivering significant resource growth.

GreenTech Metals has knocked off the first 1743m of a planned 2200m reverse-circulation drilling program to test the Austin, Shelby and Ayshia targets at its Whundo copper-zinc project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The first phase of the program was designed to test the company’s unexplored Austin and Shelby targets and for possible extensions of its Ayshia deposit – all associated with fixed-loop electromagnetic geophysical anomalies.