Eastern Metals Ltd (ASX:EMS) has secured a new exploration licence that the company thinks will help it prove up a new rare earths province in the Cobar Basin of New South Wales.
EL9565 – the licence for Black Range – has been granted to the company for a three-year term.
This tenement abuts the company’s Tara (EL9180) licence to the south and east and was applied for to secure vacant ground near the Currawalla mine site where the company has discovered high-grade rare earths.
Exploration pointed to Black Range
In March, the company conducted a raft of exploration activities at Tara, south of Cobar, including sampling of outcrop and mullock dumps at the Currawalla mine, near the southeastern corner of the tenement.
Laboratory analysis of samples collected returned highly anomalous assays for total rare earth oxides (TREO) including one sample which assayed 3.38% TREO and 1.39% lead.
The mine shaft is at the southwestern end of an outcropping quartz breccia unit that extends for some 400 metres to the northeast.
Eastern Metals discovered that the trend of this mineralised structure extends beyond the boundary of Tara, and, keen to tap further into the trend, lodged an application for a new exploration licence to obtain tenure covering this ground.
Eastern Metals’ chairman Bob Duffin said: “We are pleased to have secured this new exploration licence.
“If further mapping and sampling of the Currawalla mine structure, which is now underway, shows that anomalous levels of rare earth mineralisation extend into this tenement, we may have discovered a new rare earths province in New South Wales.”
Largest portfolio in southern Cobar Basin
The Black Range licence, which has been granted by the mining regulator, covers some 540 square kilometres and is now the company’s largest tenement in the Cobar Basin. It includes formerly vacant ground to the east and south of the Currawalla mine, as well as nearby geological environments thought to be similar to the mine site.
The total area covered by Eastern Metals’ four exploration licences in the Cobar Basin is around 1,162 square kilometres – making the company’s portfolio one of the largest in the southern part of the metals-rich basin.