St George Mining Limited (ASX: SGQ) has elected to expand its high-impact exploration focus with a major campaign to test several priority targets within four regional-scale projects in Western Australia.
Complementing the company’s most advanced exploration project at Mt Alexander, and its emerging Paterson Project, St George has announced the next phase of work at the Broadview Project in the Wheatbelt region of WA and the identification of a major intrusion at its newest project – Ajana in the Mid West.
The addition of Ajana, generated by St George’s experienced in-house team, increases the pipeline of quality exploration assets to four highly prospective battery minerals opportunities – at varying stages of advancement – that will be progressed systematically.
Exploration at the company’s most advanced asset, the Mt Alexander Project, will include seismic and EM surveys as well as drilling at several large conceptual targets.
Targets include the intersection of the strongly mineralised Cathedrals Belt with the craton-scale Ida Fault, the sparsely tested contact between greenstones and the intrusive granite in the area south of the Cathedrals Deposit as well as the Radar and Fish Hook structural anomalies, which occur along the eastern part of the Cathedrals Belt.
Drilling is also planned for the north-south oriented Mt Alexander Greenstone Belt. Historical drilling at this Belt has intersected widespread komatiite-type nickel sulphides including massive sulphides with very limited follow-up of broad-spaced drilling (often up to 1km apart).
The potential for komatiite channel hosted massive nickel sulphide mineralisation has been overlooked for many years because of the focus on the Cathedrals Belt-style of mineralisation.
The existing data base for the Mt Alexander Belt provides a strong platform from which to establish new exploration targets.
At the 100%-owned Paterson Project, St George is scheduled to commence a substantial 18-hole diamond drilling programme in the second week of May.
Drilling will follow up on the initial 35 hole aircore drilling programme completed in 2021.
Many aircore holes successfully intersected metasediments interpreted to belong to the lower Yeneena Group which hosts substantial copper/gold discoveries in this region. Visible chalcopyrite and locally intense alteration were observed in several holes.
Drilling at the Paterson Project is planned to target a structurally complex regional anticline interpreted from airborne magnetic data (Figure 2) to test the potential for large vein hosted copper/gold systems in what is interpreted to be a similar geological setting to Rio Tinto’s Winu deposit (503Mt @ 0.45% CuEq).
Winu is located approximately 50km SW of priority targets to be tested by St George.
In addition to the Mt Alexander and Paterson Projects, significant progress has been made at St George’s 100% owned Ajana and Broadview Projects, both located near the western margin of the Yilgarn Craton.
St George has granted licences covering three very unusual and previously untested regional-scale magnetic anomalies within the Ajana Project (one anomaly with a strike of +20km) and the Broadview Project (two anomalies, each with a strike of +25km).
These anomalies could represent large mafic/ultramafic intrusions and, if this is confirmed by drilling, the anomalies may have potential to host Ni-Cu-PGE deposits of similar type to IGO’s Nova/Bollinger mine and Chalice Mining’s substantial Julimar deposit.
St George completed a detailed magnetic survey covering the Ajana Project licences in early April 2022, with preliminary magnetic images just received. The magnetic data clearly defines a 20km-long north-north-west trending elliptical anomaly near the eastern margin of the Meso-Proterozoic age Northampton Block, which hosts numerous historic base metal mines generally associated with multiple north-east trending dykes.
The large Ajana magnetic anomaly includes several concentric features and is cut by the same dykes that host the historic lead and zinc sulphide deposits at Northampton.
The Broadview Project licences are located in the Wheatbelt 120km south-east of Perth, near the town of Brookton. The licences cover two, approximately parallel 25km long north-east trending strongly magnetic features that are interpreted to potentially represent two large mafic/ultramafic intrusions. T
hese unusual magnetic features cross-cut the regional north-west trending geology and appear to be linked to the craton-scale domain boundary interpreted at the eastern end of the licences.
The outstanding potential of this region and similarities in the geological setting to Chalice Mining’s Julimar Ni-Cu-PGE discovery have resulted in a ‘licencing boom’ with substantial exploration activities being undertaken by Anglo American and Impact Minerals immediately east of the Broadview Project.
St George has undertaken preliminary, widely spaced auger soil sampling along existing roads within the licences.
While interpretation of these geochemical results is still in progress, locally elevated Ni and Cu results have been identified. Further infill auger drilling will be completed to establish areas of interest for future exploration and drilling.
The company is currently sourcing quotes for an airborne EM survey to cover the two large magnetic features at Broadview. Preparation is also underway to engage with the local community and farmers to discuss St George’s planned exploration and arrange access for drill programmes.
“Our advanced Mt Alexander Project has been – and will continue to be – a significant value driver for St George as our systematic exploration of the project area focuses on the discovery of more Ni-Cu-PGE mineralisation near surface and, increasingly, at depth,” Executive Chairman, John Prineas, said.
“The exploration success at Mt Alexander has also given us the confidence to find similarly exciting and complementary projects across the Tier 1 jurisdiction of Western Australia so that we can build a pipeline of quality greenfields opportunities aligned with our battery minerals strategy.
“I am delighted with the work performed by St George’s technical team to build this four-project pipeline and to immediately identify multiple new targets that show exceptional potential for new discoveries. We have a clear path to commence high-impact drilling across all four projects.
“With important survey works and diamond drilling about to start as part of this step-up in exploration activities, St George is preparing for a period of busy and exciting newsflow at a time when investors are rewarding discovery success in the battery minerals space.
“The company looks forward to reporting back to our shareholders on the progress made.”
For further information please visit: https://stgm.com.au/
