Venture Minerals Limited (ASX: VMS) has confirmed that Chalice Mining Limited has identified a number of new targets in Venture’s South West Project in Western Australia.
Chalice has now received results from the recently completed Auger Soil Geochemistry programme and has identified two new target areas having magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulphide potential supported by underlying geology that is consistent with the presence of ultramafic rocks (shown by elevated Cr) and lie within areas of untested airborne EM anomalies and coincident with magnetic highs at Thor, that warrant exploration follow-up.
These new targets were not part of Chalice’s ground EM program completed last year and the Auger Geochemical results in these new targets have stronger coincidental magmatic indicator metals, including Ni, Cu, Co, Pd, Pt & Au, than the area covered by the recent ground EM.
There, remains several kilometres of strike on the prospective 20km long Thor magnetic trend that has not been the subject of any Surface Geochemical or EM work programmes.
In addition, there is another area in the Project that clearly has ultramafic rocks (marked by historical mapping and talc occurrences, talc is typically a product of the metamorphism of ultramafic rocks) that are running parallel to the Thor target that remain unexplored.
“The company is very pleased with the results of Chalice’s Auger Geochemistry Programme, successfully delivering two new Nickel-Copper-PGE targets associated with interpreted ultramafic rocks and coincidental with Magnetic and Airborne Electromagnetic highs at Thor,” Managing Director, Andrew Radonjic, said.
“These targets were not part of Chalice’s ground EM programmr completed last year and the Auger Soil Geochemical results for these new targets have stronger magmatic indicators than the area covered by the recent ground EM survey.
“In addition, there are several kilometres of strike on the prospective 20 km long Thor magnetic trend that is yet to see any Geochemical surveying or EM work. Venture believes that Chalice’s latest exploration results have successfully identified a new and prospective ultramafic rock sequence that runs parallel to the Thor target and has never been explored.
“I am very pleased with the progress made to date at Thor. With Chalice now having met their 51% expenditure milestone ahead of schedule, Venture looks forward to working with Chalice in the future on our South West project.”
Chalice’s Auger Soil Geochemistry programme, in combination with their recently completed Maiden Drilling Programme (with assay results due shortly) on the prospective 20 km long Thor magnetic trend, have met Chalice’s expenditure requirement of $1.2 million to earn 51% and would need to spend (at its election) a further $2.5 million by 29th July 2024 to earn 70% in Venture’s South West Project.
The next stage for the project would include following up the Auger Soil Geochemistry program results with ground EM, and infill geochemical sampling, to prepare the generated targets for potential drill testing.
The South West Project (256 sq. km) is located ~240 km south of Perth hosted in the Balingup Metamorphic Belt, within the highly prospective West Yilgarn Ni-Cu-PGE Province discovered by Chalice that hosts their Julimar discovery, which is one of the largest greenfield Ni-Cu-PGE sulphide discoveries in recent history.
The two main prospects within the Project are Thor and Odin, and both contain areas of potential Nickel-Copper-PGE prospectivity. Thor is a 20km long magnetic anomaly (refer Figure 4) associated with chromium rich rocks indicative of maficultra-mafic intrusions.
An airborne EM survey by Venture identified 13 highly conductive anomalies within the southern 6.5km of the regional magnetic feature, of which only two have been tested by single holes in Venture’s 2018 maiden drill program, with the last drill hole (TOR05) intersecting 2.4 metres of Massive Sulphide averaging 0.5% Copper, 0.05% Nickel, 0.04% Cobalt and anomalous gold and palladium.
At Odin, in the only hole drilled, Nickel and Copper sulfides were intersected within a highly prospective maficultra-mafic unit that extends over 10 strike kilometres. This was further supported by surface sampling returning significant nickel and copper geochemical anomalies
For further information please visit: https://www.ventureminerals.com.au/
