Announcements

Chariot Corporation says it has significantly expanded its flagship Black Mountain tenure in Wyoming, adding 218 contiguous new claims to mark a whopping 206 per cent increase for its lithium project area. The company’s new “BMX” claims almost enclose its original holdings, adding a strategic margin of between 1200m and 1600m around all but a 1500m-long section of State land on its north-west boundary.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears top ASX runner is … Nyrada. Its share price rose more than 672 per cent to join fellow movers and shakers Volt Power Group, Enova Mining and WhiteHawk.

Valor Resources is set to kick off its hunt for uranium in Canada’s world-renowned Athabasca Basin using an airborne electromagnetic survey – a proven technique in identifying nearby deposits of the silvery-grey metal. Results from the survey at the Cluff Lake project are expected in the second half of this year and will guide a drilling program planned to begin in the September quarter.

Aurum Resources has uncovered high-grade gold in a diamond drilling program at its Boundiali project in in Côte d’Ivoire, with assays showing a headline 4m interval grading an eye-catching 22.35g/t from 226m. But the standout intersection was not sitting solo, with other results including 5m at 4.73g/t from 53.5m including 1.1m grading a healthy 20.35g/t and 16.64m at 1.45g/t from 56.26m including 10.4m going 2.11g/t.

Radiopharm Theranostics says it has dosed its first pancreatic cancer patient in the initial phase of a study aimed at providing doctors with an enhanced screening process for the lethal and aggressive disease. The clinical trial is for the company’s patented “RAD301” radiopharmaceutical technology that is designed to detect lesions in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and create better health outcomes.

Infinity Mining has topped up its total gold resource inventory to 63,000 ounces with the addition of a maiden 2700-ounce gold resource estimate from its Great Northern project at Leonora in Western Australia. The company has 10 mineral tenements in the Leonora district and is developing a portfolio of gold resources, with its eye on an initial 500,000-ounce target.

88 Energy is poised to start flow-testing two reservoir zones in its Hickory-1 well in Alaska as it takes aim at upgrading its prospective resources to the higher-confidence contingent category. The company says both zones showed strong hydrocarbon indicators during drilling and have a combined gross, unrisked best technical prospective resource estimate of 358 million stock tank barrels of oil.

After selling the Millrose gold project for $61 million last year, Strickland Metals says its latest gold drill hits at its Celia South prospect out in the WA desert show geological potential for a similar operation. The company says results from maiden reconnaissance air-core drilling at the Warburton Mineral Field site include grades of up to 8.6 grams per tonne gold.

Ora Banda Mining has discovered a new high-grade lode system at its Sand King deposit near Kalgoorlie, with the first exploration hole at the site delivering a 16m hit grading 5.6g/t gold from 145m. The hole extends mineralisation at the prospect to the north by 100m as Sand King continues to firm as the company’s preferred option to host a second underground gold mine.

Everest Metals Corporation is scaling up its Mt Edon critical mineral project in WA’s Mid West region after securing Edith Cowan University’s mineral research arm to help develop an innovative rubidium extraction process. The pair’s new research agreement will represent a key stage towards developing the dual-mineral deposit that sits about 350km from the town of Geraldton.

Classic Minerals has its sights set on production at its Lady Ada and Lady Magdalene gold deposits in Western Australia after tabling a mining lease application for the Forrestania tenements that contain the two projects. Once approved, the licence will allow the company to mine all the gold resources at Lady Ada and Lady Magdalene, which currently hold a combined 311,050 ounces.

With uranium prices soaring globally, Toro Energy has reconfirmed its commitment to constructing its Lake Maitland pilot plant to test ores from three uranium-vanadium deposits within a radius of 110km south-west of Wiluna in Western Australia. The company says its recently-commissioned pilot plant will test improved beneficiation and hydrometallurgical circuits that it has developed from its bench-scale research.

Galan Lithium says it has set the evaporation process in motion at its Hombre Muerto West lithium brine project in Argentina, with the earthworks and lining of its first pond officially complete. The company is targeting first-phase lithium chloride production at the operation in the first half of next year and continues to tick off key infrastructure milestones.

American West Metals is set to launch a new drill attack and smash into an exploration and resource expansion program at its Storm copper play on Somerset Island, within the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After recently boosting its cash holdings by $10 million, it expects the drill program to begin next month, with about 22,000m of reverse-circulation and diamond drilling planned.

White Cliff Minerals has contracted Expert Geophysics to complete an airborne geophysical survey over its entire Coppermine project in the Canadian province of Nunavut as soon as next quarter. The company says the campaign will use mobile magnetotellurics to image subsurface resistivity and it is expected to highlight and define structural trends to optimise future drill targets.

This week’s profiled ASX runner of the week is… APM Human Services. Its share price rose more than 73 per cent to join Way2Vat, 29 Metals and Australian Mines.

Gold Mountain says it has put its foot on a big chunk of ground it believes to be prospective for rare earths and niobium in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais, with 20 new tenements covering 388sq km. The tenure comprises four groups disposed across a tract of country surrounding and within an 80km radius of the world’s biggest niobium mine in the Araxá region.

Classic Minerals appears set for a significant financial boost as it pushes towards production at its Kat Gap gold project after executing a binding term sheet with an international fintech for an initial US$10 million. The agreement with Swiss-based AuResources also provides for the advance of a further US$50 million in five tranches of US$10 million each.

Aurum Resources has bolstered its African diamond drilling fleet with a new, more powerful rig to help the company unlock a maiden gold resource estimate for its Boundiali gold project in Côte d’Ivoire this year. The three-rig drilling fleet will deliver an impressive 30,000m of core as the company takes aim at deep gold mineralisation beneath and adjacent to artisanal mines at the project.

Some old-fashioned detective work has set Terrain Minerals on a pathway to try and emulate Sirius Resources’ 2012 discovery of the hulking Nova-Bollinger deposit in WA’s Fraser Range. Terrain says its search through old geophysical records identified an intriguing “eye-shaped” feature near its ground similar to the one that led to the Nova-Bollinger base metals discovery – just 300km to the north on the same geological structure.

Si6 Metals says it has mapped and sampled clay-rich saprolite outcrops prospective for ionic-adsorption clay rare earths up to 12m thick at its Caldera JV project it shares with Foxfire Metals in Brazil. Assays are now pending after the JV sent 16 soil, channel and auger samples to the SGS Geosol laboratory in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais.

88 Energy has completed the first stage of its farm-in to a massive 18,500 square kilometres of ground in Namibia’s Owambo Basin – one of the globe’s last remaining onshore frontier petroleum basins. It now has a 20 per cent interest in the ground and can up its share to 37.5 per cent in phase two and 45 per cent in phase three of the farm-in.

American West Metals is cashed up and ready to tear into an exploration and resource expansion program at its Storm copper play in Canada after pumping up its bank account with $10 million in fundraising. The company says the raise was oversubscribed, with several of its directors intending to stump up their cash and participate in the placement.

Askari Metals has capped off its hunt for new exploration ground by staking a claim for the 260-square-kilometre Matemanga uranium project in Tanzania as the heavy metal's price surges on clean energy demand. The company’s decision to pounce on the ground comes after its extensive geotechnical reviews that identified the area as a hot uranium target with significant potential.

White Cliff Minerals says it is now the single-biggest holder of mineral exploration claims in Canada’s Northwest Territories after it was granted new licence approvals for the province’s Radium Point project. The company is focussed on iron oxide-copper-gold-uranium deposits and silver mineralisation in the area that hosts the historical Eldorado, Echo Bay and Contact Lake mines.

Valor Resources has ticked off a second item from its targeted triad of lithium targets in Canada’s booming Thunder Bay area in Ontario after completing its acquisition of the Jesaulenko project. Valor’s 100 per cent acquisition of Jesaulenko comes just days after it also grabbed the nearby Frazer Lake lithium project and an 80 per cent share of the Hook Lake uranium play in Saskatchewan.

Lithium Universe has secured a prime location for its proposed battery-grade lithium carbonate refinery in Canada after executing an option agreement to purchase a commercial property in the province of Quebec. The location for the facility is between Quebec City and Montreal at the Bécancour Industrial Waterfront Hub, with heavyweight engineering firm Hatch to undertake a comprehensive study for the refinery’s design.

ABx Group is confident its subsidiary Alcore will achieve substantially-enhanced fluorine recovery after incorporating new equipment to deliver the ideal feed particle size for its reactor to handle. The company is awaiting results from a fourth phase of testwork after a ball mill and an ultrasonic vibrating screen were used to prepare a narrower range of particle sizes for feed material.

King River Resources is set to kick off a new drill campaign at its Tennant Creek East project in the Northern Territory as part of a $2 million commitment to hunt for high-grade copper-gold this year. Drilling will target the promising Commitment, Langrenus and Providence prospects, all in proximity to several head-turning copper-gold drill intersections recorded in recent years in the highly-regarded Tennant Creek region.

88 Energy is poised to launch into the critical flow-testing phase for the Hickory-1 well at its Phoenix project in Alaska after commissioning its rig and finishing off the construction of its ice pad. With joint venture partner Burgundy Xploration contributing its share of the costs, testing is expected to start within the next 10 days once the rig mobilisation is completed.

In an exclusive interview with Bulls N’ Bears, international stock-trading entrepreneur Jim Mellon has boldly predicted a vibrant third lithium wave for global markets. Mellon says, “now is a great time to be loading up on lithium”, despite the price for the silvery-white metal going into something of a hibernation in the back part of last year.

Octava Minerals has the drill bit primed for a maiden nickel-copper-cobalt exploration program at its Yallalong project in Western Australia’s Mid West region, as part of a strategic collaboration with the CSIRO – the nation’s premier science agency. The campaign will test several significant anomalies identified through the CSIRO’s Kick-Start program, an initiative designed to assist innovative Australian start-ups and small-to-medium enterprises.