RareX commences geophysics program at Cummins Range rare earths project

Exploration junior RareX (ASX: REE) has commenced a magnetic and gravity survey at its wholly-owned Cummins Range rare earths and phosphate project in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.

The program will cover 90 square kilometres and is designed to help identify additional rare earths and phosphate-bearing carbonatites to add to the project’s critical metals inventory.

To date, the entire 519 million tonne resource (for 1.6Mt total rare earth oxides contained) at Cummins Range is believed to be located within a single carbonatite pipe.

The delineation of additional carbonatites offers RareX the opportunity to significantly expand the resource base.

Improved coverage

RareX said the magnetics survey would be completed on a 50 metre line spacing, providing improved coverage over numerous targets identified in a previous 400m-spaced survey.

The ground gravity survey will be conducted on 400m-spaced lines, with 200m infill over specific areas.

Existing gravity data over most of the Cummins Range tenements is on 2.5km spacing, and has provided little to no historical gravity information for the company.

The combination of both new surveys will enable RareX to establish a geological model of the broader project area and define key targets for future geochemical surveys.

Detailed look

RareX chief executive officer James Durrant said the geophysics program would provide a detailed look at the project area.

“This is an exciting field work program which will provide our first serious exploration coverage of the area surrounding the existing Cummins Range carbonatite pipe,” he said.

“Our exploration work to date has defined a very large resource within a single location in one corner of the pipe, with very limited exploration outside of this small area [and] previous explorers have produced some encouraging results in surrounding areas.”

Near-mine targets

The new data is expected to help to refine near-mine targets for future testing.

“Any new discoveries would be expected to have favourable economics due to their proximity to our planned operations at Cummins Range,” Mr Durrant said.

The surveys will be followed by a focus on other tenements within the RareX portfolio for target generation as part of the company’s “RareXploration” initiative.

The company will also spend time on the curation of investments in Kincora Copper, Canadian Rare Earth Corporation and RareX spin-out company Cosmos Exploration (ASX: C1X).