Diversified explorer Eclipse Metals (ASX:EPM) has exercised its confidence in its Liverpool uranium project in the Northern Territory by extending its tenement coverage in the area ahead of a pending exploration drive.
The new licence application for 228 square kilometres has been accepted by the NT Department of Mines, completing a contiguous block of exploration tenure for Eclipse and bringing the company’s Liverpool holdings to 1,467 square kilometres.
The expansion area – known as Devil’s Elbow Central – is immediately east of Eclipse’s highly prospective Devil’s Elbow uranium-gold-palladium prospect, which has produced rock chips grading up to 7,620 ppm uranium and radioactive volcanic boulder samples reading values as high as 3,3000 ppm uranium.
Previous shallow trenching at Devil’s Elbow has yielded high-grade uranium assays including 3.2% U3O8, 3.7% U3O8, 4.40% U3O8 and 5.8% U3O8 as well as 38.1g/t gold and 28.02g/t palladium.
This site is only 41 kilometres from the worked-out Nabarlek uranium mine which produced 12,000 tonnes of uranium oxide from 568,402 tonnes of ore with a grade of 1.95% U3O8.
Eclipse has delineated two structural targets which could hold structurally controlled uranium mineralisation including the Hogs Back and Ranger fault zones with 11.2 kilometres of untested strike.
In the southern portion of the tenement, there are strong untested radiometric anomalies with an area of 5 kilometres by 2 kilometres.
Expansion of Liverpool follows quickly on a move by Eclipse earlier this month to raise nearly A$1 million for exploration at the project as well as at the company’s Mary Valley manganese project in Queensland.
Historic legwork
From 2006 to 2008, Cameco Australia conducted regional uranium exploration within the current area of Devil’s Elbow Central, targeting “unconformity style” uranium deposits with the nearby economic deposits at Ranger, Jabiluka, Koongarra and Nabarlek serving as exploration models.
The gold, palladium and platinum-rich Coronation Hill-style deposits of the South Alligator Valley were also considered a valid exploration target.
Work carried out included general geological reconnaissance and a helicopter-supported surface sampling program targeting a number of illite and tourmaline alteration anomalies associated with a northeast-trending fault zone identified by an airborne hyperspectral survey flown in 2006.
Workers identified two types of ore-related alteration haloes similar to Athabasca Basin (Canada) unconformity-style deposits that are currently used in the exploration models in Northern Australia.
Interpretation of the hyperspectral data generated several anomalies for further investigation.
Further review of historical activity on this tenemented area is ongoing and will be detailed to the market upon completion.
Analysis
The tantalisingly strong uranium readings in preliminary exploration work at Devil’s Elbow supports Eclipse’s decision to expand its control over this area of the highly prized Liverpool property.
The broader Liverpool project area lies in the sought-after Alligator Rivers Uranium field, which neighbours operations run by senior uranium explorers such as Rio Tinto and Cameco Australia, the latter of which has been instrumental in establishing Devil’s Elbow’s prospectivity.
The recent funding drive by Eclipse, meanwhile, represents a potential catalyst for newsflow related to the exploration work expected to be financed.
This could in turn add value to the company by helping improve the understanding of the prospective geology already identified at Liverpool.
Importantly, Eclipse has already met with and attainted consent from Traditional Owners for uranium-gold-palladium exploration and potential mining over two exploration licence areas at the project.
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