Tag Archives: MinEx CRC

DIG CT’s coiled-tubing rig completes deepest hole to date at Moonera project

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DIG CT, a niche mineral exploration drilling company founded in Western Australia, has reported that after three successful months drilling at Premier1 Lithium’s 40%-owned Moonera project, in the Madura Province of WA, its CT500 rig has delved to 500.9 m, yielding high-quality core samples every 50 m.

DIG is focused on showcasing and commercialising MinEx Cooperative Research Centre’s (MinEx CRC) prototype Coil Tubing (CT) rig globally, with the Moonera project acting as the latest place the technology will be showcased.

The company reported: “As with any drilling program, there have been challenges, specifically record rain and flooding – all within our inaugural week of drilling!”

The highlights include:

  • Successfully completing two drill holes with a third about to commence; and
  • Drilling the deepest hole and core section the CT500 rig has ever achieved;

Moonera, a copper and rare earth elements joint venture project, is around one hour’s drive east of Cocklebiddy or more specifically, 1,231 km east of Perth, Western Australia, and 271 km to the Western/South Australian border. The project was aptly named given its proximity to Moonera Agricultural Station, known for its vast pastoral enterprises (sheep grazing), reported to be larger than some sovereign countries.

Back in March, Premier1 Lithium said that the Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) previously advised SensOre (now Premier1) in 2023 that it wished to use the coiled-tube drilling method to test its applicability in the area. The program, as it was envisaged then, consisted of three to four deep drill holes and was part of a precompetitive stratigraphic borehole program which will fill a gap in GSWA drilling in the region.

This work is part of a long-running precompetitive geoscience program by GSWA which will improve understanding of the mineral, energy and groundwater potential of the region. MinEx CRC seeks to obtain drill core, chips and downhole data (such as semi-automated scanned geochemistry) from a series of stratigraphic boreholes up to an approximate depth of 700 m, penetrating through cover of the Eucla Basin. The obtained multi-element data will allow Premier1 to further test the copper and rare earth element potential of the project at no cost. The boreholes also further test the use of novel, smaller footprint coiled-tube drilling techniques for stratigraphic drilling in covered geological terranes.

DIG CT says the CT500 rig is now expected to move onto the Pilbara where the coiled-tube drilling techniques will be further tested.

MinEx CRC goes under cover in Australia with National Drilling Initiative

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MinEx CRC, reportedly the world’s largest mineral exploration collaboration, has successfully completed its first National Drilling Initiative (NDI) campaigns, including a 10-hole, 4,000 m drilling campaign in the East Tennant area of the Northern Territory of Australia, to assess the mineral potential of basement rocks in the region.

While gold has been mined from the Paleoproterozoic rocks around Tennant Creek since the early 1930s, there has been almost no mineral exploration in the covered rocks to the east of Tennant Creek in the 90 years since, according to MinEx CRC.

“The East Tennant drilling campaign was designed to test stratigraphic and structural interpretations and assess the mineral potential of basement rocks to the east of the Tennant Creek mineral field,” MinEx CRC CEO, Andrew Bailey, said. “These basement rocks are under-explored and concealed by hundreds of metres of younger sedimentary rocks.”

The drilling campaign is part of a world-first scientific drilling program, the NDI, designed to understand the evolution of the Australia continent, provide clues about where to search for new mineral deposits and bring forward the next generation of mineral exploration technology, MinEx CRC says.

Included within the NDI campaign was a 1,750m drill hole (known as NDI Carrara 1) at a location near the Northern Territory/Queensland border, around 250 km northwest of Mount Isa. This hole was designed to capture geological and stratigraphic information from a previously unknown sedimentary basin, and to assess the basin for potential to host energy and mineral resources.

In collaboration with Geoscience Australia and geological survey organisations in every state and territory, the NDI will manage and deliver a seven-year program with multiple drilling campaigns spread across Australia.

Results from the drilling program have uncovered a range of igneous and metasedimentary rocks, enabled a better understanding of the structure and stratigraphy of the area and helped to refine pre-drilling interpretations of the region’s prospectivity, according to the collaborative project.

Drilling has also provided pinning points to constrain cover thickness, with prospective basement typically concealed beneath less than 200 m of Georgina Basin sediments and less than 30 m of Cambrian basalt of the Kalkarindji Suite.

Geoscience Australia’s Chief of Minerals, Energy and Groundwater Division, Dr Andrew Heap, said: “We are proud to be a participant of the MinEx CRC through our Exploring for the Future program, which identified the region as a highly-prospective frontier. The drilling results are confirming this view and will support the continued development of the Barkly Region.

“A range of detailed analyses are planned to comprehensively characterise the drill core, which will provide insights into the geological evolution and mineral systems potential of the region. These results will be released throughout 2021.”

Dr Heap added: “Projects like this reveal the geology underneath the vast sedimentary cover that extends across most of Australia and open up frontier regions for exploration and resource discovery. In the future, the new geological knowledge and methods that we’ve used here can be applied in other similar prospective geological terranes across the country.”

Ian Scrimgeour, Executive Director NT Geological Survey, said the East Tennant NDI drill core provides an exciting opportunity to understand the potential of the underexplored Barkly area.

“The range of ancillary datasets that have been acquired during the drilling campaign, coupled with the ongoing research activities on the drill core, will transform the understanding of minerals systems in the region,” he said.

“NTGS is delighted to provide value-add datasets with the acquisition of hyperspectral data and high-resolution imaging of the drill core through our HyLogger instrument.”

The MinEx Cooperative Research Centre was established to:

  • Develop more productive, safer and environmentally friendly drilling methods to discover and drill-out deposits, including coiled tubing drilling technology;
  • Develop new technologies for collecting data while drilling, bringing forward mine production; and
  • Implement an NDI – a world-first collaboration of geological surveys, researchers and industry that will undertake drilling in under-explored areas of potential mineral wealth in Australia.

MICROMINE to play leading role in MinEx CRC’s 3D geological modelling project

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MICROMINE says it has been selected by MinEx Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) as the sole software provider for the project.

MICROMINE will provide information and advice on software solutions for mineral exploration as part of the A$218 million ($154 million) CRC project, which was set up to develop new technologies to increase the discovery of new mineral deposits.

“Australia’s share of global mineral exploration reduced from about 25% in the 1990s to around 12.5% in recent years,” MICROMINE said. “The decline in activity has driven the establishment of the CRC, which is backed by A$50 million in Australian Government funding and another A$165 million in private sector support.”

MICROMINE joins 34 MinEx CRC partners from the mining equipment, technology and services sector and major miners BHP, South32, Anglo American and Barrick Gold, as well as research organisations in Australia and overseas, such as CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and various universities.

MICROMINE will be involved in the team focused on 3D geological modelling, which brings together mining companies, geological surveys and research institutions from Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the UK.

Mark Gabbitus, Product Strategy Manager for MICROMINE’s exploration and mine design software, Micromine, said: “MICROMINE will work with our project partners to develop a 3D geological and geophysical modelling package, which will help geologists, researchers and exploration companies to find mineral deposits in a more efficient and cost-effective way.”

The resultant solution will allow field geologists, researchers, explorers, resources modellers and managers to better define their 3D geological environment and assess the need for additional data and research, according to the company.

“It will also address existing problems explorers face that are related to urban geology, basin resources exploration and exploitation and mineral and scientific exploration in poly-deformed metamorphosed terranes,” MICROMINE added.

Gabbitus said the CRC complements the work MICROMINE is already undertaking to develop its geological software solution, Geobank.

“MICROMINE will contribute to the development of an open source algorithm, while scoping the development of a commercial version that could fit more seamlessly into the workflow of the explorers or miners that work with Micromine,” he said.

“There is a significant amount of work to do over the coming years but there are some exceptionally smart people involved in the project and it is very exciting for MICROMINE to play a role in developing the next generation of exploration and modelling tools.”