Sipa Resources Limited (ASX: SRI) has confirmed that the details of the exploration programme at its Paterson North Copper-Gold project in Western Australia have been agreed with Rio Tinto Exploration Pty Limited as part of the Farm in and Joint Venture Agreement between Sipa and RTX.
The key elements of the programme for the 2023 field season include ~1,400m of drilling to test high priority targets previously identified by the parties, and additional heritage surveys to allow access to new areas of interest.
Joint planning by Sipa and RTX for the latest drill programme incorporated the extensive geophysical and geochemical datasets obtained during the 2022 and previous field seasons, including several known geochemical pathfinders.
Exploration completed in 2022 at Paterson North included a 2,648m Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling program across four prospects, a SkyTEM aerial electromagnetic survey over ~60% of the project area and a gradient array IP survey. A separate heritage survey was also carried out to confirm access points for drill target areas in the forthcoming 2023 programme.
The drilling budget of ~$1.8M for the 2023 field season has been confirmed between the parties, in accordance with the terms of the Agreement.
“We are pleased to confirm that funding arrangements have been finalised and planning is underway for the 2023 drill programme at Paterson North,” Sipa Resources Managing Director, Pip Darvall, said.
“In preparing for this year’s field season, Sipa has continued to benefit from RTX’s discovery expertise at the neighbouring Winu deposit. As the weather starts to cool down, we look forward to getting back out into the field and continuing the systematic testing of our drill targets at Paterson North, which have been specifically identified based on previous drill results and survey data from the 2022 field season.”
RTX Agreement:
Under the terms of the Agreement, RTX can earn a 70% interest in the project by sole funding expenditure of A$12M (being $6M to earn 55% and a further A$6M to earn to 70%) and increase its interest to 80% by sole funding to the earlier of a JORC resource of A$1B in-ground value or the completion of an ‘Order of Magnitude Study’ (refer ASX release 3/8/2020). Sipa is the current manager of the Paterson North project.
For further information please visit: https://sipa.com.au/
