Matt Birney

With an ever-increasing spotlight shining on rare earths, a former sleepy tourist town on the WA south coast could be on the cusp of becoming the next epicentre of a rare earths mineral boom. One of the major attractions of the area is the discovery of “clay-hosted” rare earths which, unlike their hard rock counterparts, can be considerably easier to mine – and they can exist in vast quantities.

Godolphin Resources has used a 5-hole diamond drilling campaign to light up rare earths mineralisation at its Narraburra project in NSW that will ultimately flow into a new year resource update. Significant intercepts include 2m at 1238 parts per million total rare earth oxides from 15m and on the back of the latest results the company believes a much larger rare earths system may be on offer given the strikes were acquired outside of the site’s known mineralisation.

First-pass RC drilling by joint venture DiscovEx Resources and Carnaby Resources at its Shamrock prospect, part of the Greater Duchess project near Mt Isa in Queensland has unearthed a more than 750m long corridor of copper-gold sulphide mineralisation. Headline strikes from the 8-hole, 1888m campaign include 4m at 1.5 per cent copper inside of a broader 7m hit going 1.1 per cent from 76m.

RC drilling at Novo Resources’ Milburn nickel-copper-gold target near Karratha in WA has returned a swag of anomalous copper hits including 3m at 0.59 per cent from 94m, inside of a broader 13m intercept grading 0.39 per cent from 92m. The operation is adjacent to Artemis Resources’ Carlow Castle project where earlier this year the company outlined a 14.3 million tonne inferred resource going 0.4 per cent for 53,000 tonnes of contained copper.

Lindian Resources says its first assays from a maiden drill campaign at the company’s Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi are due this month with one quarter of its RC and diamond drill program completed. The explorer is currently undertaking phase 1 of its 12,500m resource definition drilling operation including 10,000m of RC drilling and a further 2500m of diamond drilling to test mineralisation to a depth of 300m. The 44-hole campaign includes two RC rigs and one diamond drill rig.

Amidst new legislation aiming at curbing surging energy prices on the east coast, Empire Energy’s Beetaloo sub-basin gas assets in the Northern Territory have been made exempt from a temporary domestic price cap of $12 a gigajoule. The 12-month ceiling targets producers with new domestic wholesale gas contracts, however the directive only applies to in-operation gas fields – leaving Empire’s undeveloped holdings unaffected.

St George Mining has entered a memorandum of understanding with global battery giant SVOLT Energy Technology to collaborate on lithium projects including the explorer’s Mt Alexander operation near Leonora in Western Australia. The agreement establishes a framework for St George and SVOLT to negotiate and consider entering a range of commercial transactions for investment and offtake opportunities relating to lithium projects in Australia.

Panther Metals’ latest diamond drilling campaign has delivered new gold lodes and extended mineralisation at its Burtville East gold project it outside of Laverton in WA. One of the best results was a 14.6m strike at 2.23g/t gold from 37.4m. Another diamond drill core contained visible gold returns inside a 0.3m hit at 21.4g/t gold from 48.4 metres from outside the project’s existing mineralisation.

Meeka Metals has recorded more shallow gold hits outside the defined mineral resource on the western flank of the company’s Turnberry deposit that forms part of its greater Murchison gold project. Turnberry currently has a resource of 11.3 million tonnes grading 1.7g/t for 610,000 ounces of gold with an update scheduled before the end of the year.