St George Mining has entered into a binding agreement for an option to pick up the Woolgangie critical metals project that covers around 1200 square kilometres in the Goldfields region of WA.
The company says Woolgangie is prospective for lithium, nickel-copper sulphides and ionic clay-hosted rare earths mineralisation. The package includes nine granted or in application exploration licences and extends south-west of Coolgardie and west of Kambalda.
St George is already planning an exploration blitz at the project this year including field mapping, outcrop sampling, soil surveys, airborne magnetic surveys, ground electromagnetic surveys in addition to a proposed drill campaign.
Seven of the exploration licences for Woolgangie cover a 70km strike of the Ida Fault with large sections of an adjacent outcropping and concealed greenstone belt that hosts pegmatites with potential for lithium. The other two licences cover observed pegmatite occurrences that extend around 25km along the western margin of an established lithium region that hosts a number of successful operations including Mineral Resources’ Mt Marion mine. The company says no previous lithium exploration has been conducted across the project.
St George Mining Executive Chairman, John Prineas said: “The option over Woolgangie provides a strategic and cost-effective pathway to grow St George’s already substantial lithium and critical metals opportunities in Western Australia, complementing our success at Mt Alexander and the potential of our other projects including Paterson, Ajana and Broadview projects.”
St George’s fully owned subsidiary, Destiny Nickel, has entered into an option agreement with vendors Belres and WA Mining Partners to acquire the package of tenements. Destiny has paid the vendors an option fee of $200,000 cash in addition to $200,000 of St George shares. Destiny must pay an additional $1 million in shares to exercise the option by February 2, 2025.
If St George is able to define a JORC compliant resource for any mineral at Woolgangie, Destiny will pay the vendors $500,000 cash and $500,000 in shares. The subsidiary must also meet an annual commitment to spend $400,000 on expenditure on the tenements and applications. The vendors will also be paid a 0.5 per cent smelter royalty if any mineral products are produced or sold from the site.
In addition to Woolgangie’s lithium prospectivity, the area has also shown promise for copper and rare earths. Historical drilling in 2010 by Mincor Resources highlighted several wide zones of rare earths anomalism while exploring for nickel sulphides. St George believes the preliminary interpretation is that the anomalism is more likely to relate to ionic clay-hosted rare earths mineralisation rather than carbonatite hosted mineralisation.
Historical drilling conducted by ASX-listed Emu discovered extensive near-surface copper sulphide mineralisation that St George plans to follow up on. The company is currently conducting a review of historical data from Woolgangie to prioritise a program of work at the site.
The company has seen significant success in lithium after it discovered pegmatites at its Mt Alexander project about 250km north of Kalgoorlie. Its maiden drill campaign along the pegmatite outcrops intersected visual lithium-bearing minerals along a 1.7km strike. Those pegmatites start at the surface, where rock chips bearing 3.25 per cent lithium were found, run 200m down and in many cases remain open at depth.
Considering the success St George has found at its Mt Alexander project, the market will be keeping a close eye on what the company can unearth at Woolgangie.
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By Matt Birney
