DRILL TARGETS CONFIRMED AT THE BENMARA BATTERY METALS PROJECT

WATCH: In this Exploration Update, Exploration Manager Christine Lawley
discusses the drill targeting and current status of the drilling program. 

 

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HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Resolution Minerals has finalised drill targeting for two 1,000m deep stratigraphic diamond core drill holes at the Benmara Battery Metals Project in the Northern Territory

  • Drilling is scheduled to commence in early August and will take 2.5 months to complete

  • The drill holes have been designed to identify prospective age host rocks and test for battery metals mineralisation and will improve RML’s understanding of this underexplored region

  • The drill program is fully funded via a 10-year Farm-in & JV Agreement with BHP Group for the expenditure of up to $4m in stages over five years for BHP Group to earn an initial 51% interest

  • $150,000 was recently awarded to the program costs through the Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations program by the Northern Territory Government

“We’re excited to have finalised our drill targeting and have commenced earthworks, ahead of the drill rig arriving on site shortly. The drill targets have been developed, based on our knowledge of other battery metal occurrences across the QLD border, including the Century Mine and the Walford Creek Deposit. The open-source NW Mineral Province Deposit 3D Atlas, developed by The University Of Queensland, has proved to be a valuable comparative resource, for assessing the structural controls on potential mineralisation within RML’s tenements.”

- Christine Lawley, Exploration Manager, Resolution Minerals

 

OVERVIEW:  

Resolution Minerals Ltd (ASX: RML, Resolution, or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has finalised drill targeting at the Benmara Battery Metals Project, and a drill rig has been secured to undertake the exploration program. The two-hole, 2,000m diamond drilling program is scheduled to commence in early August.

The drill targets have been designed to test the Fish River and Bauhinia Faults. These fault zones provide an ideal location for mineralised fluids to focus and precipitate metals in reductive trap sites. This is evidenced by the formation of the nearby Walford Creek Deposit (Cu-Pb-Zn-Ag-Co) and the Century Mine (Pb-Zn-Ag) in Queensland, which share equivalent host rocks and similar structural settings.

While the design of the drill holes has been optimised for intersecting mineralisation, the 1,000m deep holes are stratigraphic in nature and have been positioned to give a better understanding of the rock units present at depth. This new data will contribute to the RML and BHP Exploration Teams' comprehension of the underlying geology and regional prospectivity of the Benmara Project.

The Benmara Project is situated on the northern portion of the underexplored South Nicholson Basin and is, in many respects, a new geological frontier. Until recently, the Benmara Group was thought to be much younger. In 2020, geochronology published by Geoscience Australia demonstrated that this belief was incorrect and, more importantly, that the Benmara Group is Paleoproterozoic rather than Mesoproterozoic. This means the rocks are stratigraphically and temporally equivalent to the prospective Fickling Group (Walford Creek Deposit) and the McNamara Group (Century Mine). The Exploring for the Future initiative also found evidence of a regional shallow-marine hydrothermal circulatory system and the potential for associated base metal mineral systems coinciding with the Benmara Project. The hydrothermal system shares its age with the base metal mineralisation in the resource-rich Mount Isa Province and further supports the prospectivity of the Benmara Project.

Resolution was an early mover in this relatively unexplored basin and has secured a commanding ground position of over 3,000 km2. This drilling program is the first phase of a multi-year program designed in collaboration between the RML and BHP Group Exploration Teams to discover a Tier 1 battery metals deposit.

The drilling program is fully funded via a farm-in agreement with our JV partner, BHP, and has been supplemented by a $150,000 grant from the Resourcing the Territory initiative.

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