An area to the northeast of Alice Springs has the potential to emerge as the Northern Territory’s newest nickel, copper and gold province, according to an explorer active in the province. Speaking in Perth on the first day of the 2011 Paydirt Australian Nickel Conference, last week, Mithril Resources’ Managing Director, Graham Ascough, said there were strong mineralised fundamentals about the Huckitta region that could rapidly prove up its potential as a new province.
“In just the three past years, it has yielded significant nickel sulphide, copper and cobalt discoveries and at least 16 new mineral occurrences at surface since 2009,” Ascough said. “In addition, seismic data produced only this year confirms that one of the Huckitta project’s main target, Basil, is hosted in a crustal scale fault zone that extends to the mantle and in geological context, that is the sort of setting ripe for large base metals deposits,” he said.
“The area also benefits from two conventional exploration options – ‘boots on ground’ mapping and sampling as its very fertile targets are near surface, and strong electrical conductors which can be detected using conventional geophysics.”
Ascough said Huckitta’s development would now take on a more rapid pathway under a multi-million joint venture agreement just signed with MMG Exploration (owned by international base stream company, MinMetals) for Mithril’s 100%-only owned tenements in the Huckitta footprint.
“MMG views Huckitta’s nickel upside as highly prospective. They are keen to assign resources on the ground under a A$4 million commitment over five years to take Huckitta through to completion of a prefeasibility study including a maiden Indicated Resources estimate,” he said.
“There will now be an intense pipeline of activity across Huckitta over the next six months including drilling, mapping, geophysics and heritage surveys and we would expect from that to build a much more intensive picture of what this promising region offers,” Ascough said.
The JV does not impact Mithril’s non-nickel rights over the tenements concerned.
MMG operates the Century, Golden Grove and Rosbery mining operations in Australia and the Sepon gold and copper operation in Laos in South East Asia.
