The Australian All Ordinaries notched a small gain to 5,181 points today on mixed overseas leads, an Australian dollar exchange rate hovering around US0.70 and mostly weaker commodity pricing.
A 0.8% slide in the London Metal Exchange nickel price overnight to US$9,472 per tonne, however, didn’t keep this Fraser Range explorer from building momentum with the base metal .…
MARKET ACTION
Shares in Pioneer Resources (ASX:PIO) spiked 13.3% today to A$0.017 on the heels of positive exploration progress at the explorer’s Fairwater nickel sulphide project in Western Australia’s Fraser Range region.
Diamond core drilling at the project concluded that a mafic-ultramafic conduit sill-dyke system has been intersected, setting up final lab assaying this month and plans for a gravity survey over the area before the end of the year.
To date, three holes totalling 370 metres have been drilled with each hole intersected mafic-ultramafic rocks, which are interpreted as being part of a conduit sill-dyke system, thickening towards the centre of an aeromagnetic anomaly.
Fairwater’s nickel targets are located in interpreted Proterozoic-aged rocks between 100 and 130 kilometres southwest of Independence Group’s (ASX:IGO) Nova and Bollinger nickel discoveries, in WA’s Albany-Fraser Orogen.
Fraser Range nickel sulphide deposits are classed as ‘mafic intrusive hosted’, a class of deposit that includes Voysey’s Bay in Canada and Radio Hill in WA amongst others. This style of deposit occurs within areas where tectonic events have resulted in zones of crustal thinning, often adjacent to major crustal sutures.
The latest work at Fairwater has suggested the presence of a nickel-bearing system of significance and has paved the way for a more targeted exploration plan which will include gravity surveying and additional drilling in the near term.
BLUE CHIPS
Major miners
BHP Billiton (ASX:BHP) down 2.9% to $20.95
Fortescue Metals Group (ASX:FMG) up 3.5% to $2.38
Newcrest (ASX:NCM) up 1.1% to $11.51
Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) up 0.2% to $49.50
Energy or Oil and Gas
Oil Search (ASX:OSH) up 0.5% to $7.91
Santos (ASX:STO) flat at $5.91
Woodside Petroleum (ASX:WPL) down 0.5% to $29.25
Big 4 banks
ANZ Bank (ASX:ANZ) up 2.8% to $26.24
Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA) up 1.6% to $76.00
National Australia Bank (ASX:NAB) up 1.4% to $28.37
Westpac (ASX:WBC) down 2.5% to $30.14
Other banks, financials and industrials
AMP (ASX:AMP) up 0.2% to $5.75
Bank of Queensland (ASX:BOQ) up 1.5% to $13.45
Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (ASX:BEN) up 0.8% to $10.72
Macquarie Group (ASX:MQG) up 1.5% to $81.39
Suncorp (ASX:SUN) up 1.0% to $13.00
Telstra (ASX:TLS) up 0.9% to $5.29
Retailers
JB Hi-FI (ASX:JBH) up 2.6% to $17.90
Wesfarmers (ASX:WES) up 1.0% to $38.89
Woolworths (ASX:WOW) up 0.4% to $23.97
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