Tambourah Metals advances gold exploration and expands critical mineral holdings in WA
Tambourah Metals (ASX: TMB) has had a busy quarter advancing exploration activities across its gold and critical minerals projects in Western Australia.
The company completed a review of drilling data at the Cheela gold project to confirm a relatively shallow and potentially high-grade, sub-horizontal target based on historic intercepts of 16 metres at 4.75 grams per tonne gold from 88m and 11m at 4.17g/t gold from 34m.
The project extends over 70 kilometres along the crustal-scale, west-north-west trending Nanjilgady Fault associated with the giant Paulsens and Mt Olympus gold deposits.
Cheela is interpreted as a sub-horizontal zone of mineralisation related to a redox zone within the weathered profile.
A program of aircore drilling has been designed to in-fill and test the extent of the high-grade intercepts.
Geological model
At the historic Tambourah goldfield, work continued on developing a geological model to identify controls on gold distribution.
High-grade intersections from a drilling program last year at the Tambourah King target included 2m at 18g/t gold from 55m, including 1m at 20.2g/t from 55m and 5m at 6.1g/t gold from 69m, including 1m at 28g/t from 70m.
Shallow intersections from first-pass drilling at the World’s Fair discovery included 3m at 3.3g/t gold from 23m, 4m at 3.0g/t gold from 15m and 4m at 3.0g/t gold from 15m.
In November, Tambourah said ongoing interpretation of the results had identified gold in settings other than the familiar vein-hosted, lode-style mineralisation.
This highlighted the possibility of extending exploration into nearby intrusive bodies of significant scale, with potential for Hemi-style intrusion-related gold mineralisation.
Additional field mapping and sampling will be completed in the coming quarter prior to the final selection of targets and planned drilling.
Bryah Basin licence
During the quarter, Tambourah was granted an exploration licence within the Proterozoic Bryah Basin in the state’s Murchison region.
The basin has been a centre of major gold production and hosts three high-grade copper-gold volcanic-hosted massive sulphide deposits at Horseshoe Lights, DeGrussa and Monty.
The new licence covers an area of 18.5 sq km and is interpreted to include the strike continuation of the geological contact between the Narracoota and Karalundi Formations.
This contact is believed to host the DeGrussa deposit and is considered to be an important geological marker.
Previous explorers identified a 2.5km-long multi-element geochemical anomaly associated with the interpreted position of the contact and follow-up drilling highlighted the Neptune and Neptune East targets with anomalous intersections.
Critical minerals earn-in
At the Julimar North critical minerals project suite in WA, Tambourah and Chilean lithium producer Sociedad Quimica Minera de Chile SA (SQM) entered into an agreement whereby SQM could earn equity across six of the discoveries.
SQM has been granted the right to earn an initial 50% interest and up to a maximum 70% in all mineral rights at Julimar North by sole funding a minimum of $1.5 million in exploration and development activity.
During the period, SQM also completed heritage clearance surveys over drill targets identified on the Mogumber project tenements within Julimar North.
In April, the company commenced a 9,000m aircore drilling program to test a historic tantalum geochemical anomaly at the tenements.
Shaw River sampling
Sampling in February at the Shaw River lithium project south-east of Port Hedland extended the search area outside the immediate area of historic alluvial and eluvial workings.
Of 48 samples collected, six reported above 500 parts per million lithium oxide to a maximum of 4,823ppm.
Drone mapping was also employed to interpret the structural and linear features of numerous potential lithium-caesium-tantalum pegmatite targets for ground truthing.
Cash position
Tambourah’s cash position at end March was $2.88m.
Expenditure incurred on exploration activities during the quarter was approximately $230,000.
No expenditure was incurred on mining production or development activities.
Payments of approximately $99,000 were made to related parties of Tambourah.