Terrain steps up hunt for big nickel deposit in elephant country

Terrain Minerals has kicked-off a ground-based EM survey to better define four very curious, potentially nickel-copper conductors at its Lort River project that sits in the same geological belt as IGO’s huge nickel-copper discovery in the renowned Albany-Fraser Belt. It believes a geophysical “eye” feature identified at Lort River shares strong similarities with IGO’s “eye” that was identified prior to its discovery of the large (and now producing) Nova-Bollinger operation in the region in 2012.

Management has engaged geophysical consulting firm Southern Geoscience Consultants (SGC) to conduct the ground survey to capture and process the data.

Terrain estimates a timeframe of 1.5 to 2 days will be necessary at each target location to acquire the relevant information.

The ground-based survey is designed to tweak the company’s understanding of the four conductors’ positions and orientations to enable optimal drill targeting.

Two conductors sit within a Nova-lookalike eye-shaped feature on the western edge at Lort River, giving Terrain some hope it may be sitting on a nickel-copper discovery.

To bolster that belief, SGC has identified the Lort River “eye” to be a mafic-intrusive geological feature similar to the geology found at Nova-Bollinger.

A previous airborne-electromagnetic (AEM) survey initially identified the four potentially mineral-rich zones at the project’s site, within the same mineralised belt hosting Nova-Bollinger.

SGC has independently verified all four conductors as being worthy for further exploration.

Management also interprets the AEM survey data to show the significant potential for Lort River to host Nova-style magmatic nickel-copper sulphides and says the conductors may indicate the presence of possible valuable sulphide mineralisation.

Terrain Minerals executive director Justin Virgin said: “The hunt for the next Nova-style magmatic nickel-copper deposit in the Albany-Fraser Belt is intensifying and we believe we are at the forefront of this search. IGO’s success with Nova has shown that these highly valuable ore bodies are not isolated occurrences but part of a broader, richly mineralised region.”

Virgin also said a recent airborne geophysical survey returned compelling evidence that the southern half of the Albany-Fraser Belt could be just as promising as the northern region where Nova sits.

The company says the current ground EM survey and drilling will be necessary to confirm the presence of nickel-copper sulphides and it plans to drill the EM targets in January.

It is proposing to conduct a soil geochemical sampling program across all four conductors shortly.

IGO is on the record as saying it believes the magmatic processes required to form Nova-Style massive nickel-copper sulphide deposits have most likely occurred along the entire length of the Albany-Fraser Belt.

Terrain has its own theories about the region, believing the huge mafic intrusive units forced up within the earth’s crust from internal pressures is the real answer to finding a new nickel-copper deposit.

The Albany-Fraser Orogen extends for a minimum 1200km in length along the southern margin of the Archean Yilgarn Craton and was made famous after Sirius Resources’ (now IGO’s) earth-shattering Nova nickel-copper-cobalt discovery in 2012.

Sirius followed up with its nearby Bollinger discovery shortly thereafter, providing the company with the region’s first massive nickel-copper project.

Sirius was bought out in 2015 for $1.8 billion by IGO.

To the end of the 2024 financial year, the huge resource has been mined and processed to the tune of 1.66 million tonnes of metal-in-concentrate, producing 186,400 tonnes of nickel, 78,300t of copper and 6500t of cobalt.

The Lort River project extends for more than 640 square kilometres of prospective exploration acreage, centred about 50km northwest of the southern port city of Esperance and is about 300km southwest of the Nova-Bollinger project.

The Albany-Fraser Orogen is believed to have been created between 1.1 billion and 2.6 billion years ago, resulting from an orogenic event.

An orogen or orogenic belt is a zone of the earth’s crust affected by orogeny.

The belt develops when a continental plate crumples - a factor often associated with subduction collisions - and it is then uplifted to form one or more mountain ranges.

The Albany-Fraser Belt is said by many analysts to have multiple huge nickel-copper deposits laying within its massive tenure, yet, it has only ever revealed one major sulphide discovery.

The question is, after Terrain’s ground EM and drilling program, will the answer remain the same?

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au