Stelar Metals Ltd (ASX:SLB) is about to kick off its inaugural diamond drilling program at Evelyn Dam Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) Project in South Australia’s highly prospective Gawler Craton.
Evelyn Dam is one of the largest untested gravity anomalies in the Gawler Craton.
Titeline’s diamond drill rig will commence inaugural works at the IOCG project this week after completing drilling at Emmie Bluff for Coda Minerals Ltd (ASX:COD).
Single deep diamond drill hole
The campaign will run from early June to mid-July and will consist of a single deep diamond hole to a nominal depth of 1,500 metres.
Stelar Metals CEO Colin Skidmore said: “We are very excited to begin our inaugural deep hole drill program at the highly prospective Evelyn Dam IOCG project.
“Our reprocessing of the gravity and magnetic surveys by BHP and others indicate this project has the potential to be a large Olympic Dam style IOCG target and is therefore worthy of deep drill testing.”
“This inaugural drill program will see Titeline’s drill rig use the second cleared drill site located to the south of EVE001 drilled by Rio Tinto and is designed as an angle hole to intersect the high-level gravity peak at 1,200-1,500 metres drilled depth.”
Assays expected within two months
The drilling campaign is estimated to take six weeks, after which the core will be processed on-site and shipped to Euro Exploration’s Adelaide facility for core cutting and sampling.
Drill assay results are expected within two months, following submission to the laboratory, during the third quarter of the year.
Drilling is focused on the large-scale IOCG geophysical target at the Evelyn Dam project, which is 100% owned by Stelar Metals.
Short history of the IOCG
Two-thirds of Australia’s copper production is derived from the Eastern Gawler Craton in South Australia from large-scale IOCG deposits operated by BHP and Oz Minerals.
The Evelyn Dam Project was previously owned by BHP, which relinquished the tenure after completing only geophysical surveys and did not undertake any drilling.
After BHP, Rio Tinto joint-ventured into the Evelyn Dam Project prior to Stelar Metals purchasing 100% of the project as part of its recent IPO.
Evelyn Dam’s large gravity anomaly has recently been reprocessed and 3D-inversion-modelled by David McInnes of Montana Geoscience.
The refined modelling defined a large, dense body around 5 kilometres in diameter at depth with a pronounced and much shallower peak rising up on its western site to within range of being viably drill tested.
Stelar Metals is focused on the discovery of critical metals, with projects located in the world-class mining region of South Australia.
In addition to Evelyn Dam, Stelar Metals is planning upcoming work programs for all of its five exploration projects including the Linda Zinc Project, Torrens IOCG Project, Gunson Copper Project and Baratta Copper Project.