Chase Mining Corporation Ltd (ASX:CML), along with joint venture partner, private company Auburn Resources Ltd, is about to set the drills turning across 2,100 metres at the Hawkwood JV area in southeast Queensland.
The Hawkwood JV consists of 13 granted exploration tenements covering around 1,680 square kilometres including several drill-ready prospects, and areas that need minimal surface area programs prior to drilling.
To start “as soon as practicably possible”
Chase Mining worked through the Auburn Resources Ltd (AUB) database to agree on the first-pass drilling campaign, to be arranged and managed by AUB “as soon as practically possible” in the current quarter.
Among the prospects the JV is keen to get stuck into are eight new magmatic nickel-copper-platinum group (PGE) targets in previously unexplored gabbro complexes.
The companies have also identified two new porphyry copper targets, with one ready for initial drilling.
Additionally, a 12-kilometre zone of anomalous copper gold palladium and platinum in a layered gabbro is drill-ready.
Entire new district
The JV gives CML the opportunity to explore an entire new district of potential large-scale copper-nickel-cobalt-gold-PGE (palladium and platinum) prospects in central southeast Queensland, 350 kilometres northwest of Brisbane.
Over several years AUB has acquired a package of 100%-owned adjacent exploration tenements in the largely covered portion of the Permo Triassic mineral belt of southern and central Queensland.
The area had not been exposed to much exploration before AUB picked it up.
Project delayed by bad weather
The early start to an exceptional La Niña wet season and localised flooding in late 2021 prevented ground access to the project area.
AUB was not able to locate suitable geophysical contractors to complete the planned ground EM surveys to better define the existing VTEM targets.
Nickel, copper, gold and PGE targets
By applying modern geochemical techniques and a local geological understanding, partner AUB identified the source areas of copper, nickel, gold and PGEs that had been detected in stream sediments.
This led to an entire trend of highly anomalous mafic complexes being defined and secured under granted exploration tenements.
The nickel-copper-gold-PGE source areas have been partially investigated by airborne electromagnetics surveys (VTEM), with depth-persistent conductors detected adjacent to the peak geochemical values.