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AusNiCo is Australia’s most recent discoverer of ore grade nickel sulphide mineralisation at its Pembroke Prospect on the Black Snake Plateau, 30km south of Kilkivan in southeast Queensland during mid 2008.
Commercial Significance
Nickel Sulphides are rare discoveries. There have only been two ore-grade nickel sulphide discoveries in Eastern Australia in the last 35 years, namely the Avebury Nickel Mine in western Tasmania discovered by Allegiance Mining NL in January 1998 and now Pembroke discovered by AusNiCo in 2008. Furthermore, since 1978, the only other new nickel deposit found in Australia was at Cosmos in Western Australia the by Jubilee Mines Limited in 2001. All other new nickel projects developed in Australia since 1978 (perhaps 5 in total) were known occurrences or nickel mining camps in 1978.
Jubilee Mines was purchased by Xstrata for more than $2.2 billion in late 2007 and Allegiance was purchased by Zinifex Limited (now OZ Mining Limited) for more than $840 million in mid 2008. Nickel sulphide mines are worth a lot - and are very rare.
AusNiCo’s Targets
AusNiCo’s exploration team have developed a sophisticated understanding of the geology of the Black Snake geological province which is simplistically summarised in Figure 2.
Pembroke Nickel Sulphide Discovery
AusNiCo has discovered significant new ore-grade nickel-cobalt sulphides and copper-gold mineralisation zones at the Pembroke prospect on the Black Snake Plateau, 30km south of Kilkivan in Southeast Queensland. Drillhole PEM 2 at Pembroke has intersected 4 metres of fresh nickel sulphides grading 1.1% nickel and 525 ppm (0.05%) cobalt within a large 50 metre-wide zone of significant nickel sulphide mineralisation averaging 0.34% nickel. The bottom of the hole was still in this nickel mineralisation.
The copper-gold zone of 20 metres averaging 0.48% copper, 1.5 g/t gold that occurs above the nickel sulphides in hole PEM 2 is typical of the copper-nickel zonation of the entire black Snake Plateau district.
Silver Valley Copper-Silver Sulphide Discovery
AusNiCo has also discovered high-grade copper-silver sulphides at the Silver Valley prospect located two kilometres east of Pembroke as announced on 2nd June. The first drillhole at Silver Valley, SG1 intersected 14m at a grade of 1.2% copper and 87g/t (2.8 ounces per tonne) of silver in primary sulphide mineralisation. The potential for high grade extensions to considerable depths is therefore encouraging. The 5km long, 500m wide soil geochemical anomaly at Silver Valley suggests significant potential exists for a major mineralised system (see Figure 3).
Nickel Province
Nickel mineralisation discovered within AusNiCo’s extensive tenements in South East Queensland show potential for a new Nickel province more than 30km long.
Figure 4 shows the geology south of Kilkivan. The “serpentinite” is an altered peridotite rock which is a potential host rock for nickel and nickel-copper-gold mineralisation.
To date, only a small part of this serpentinite belt has been explored in modern times for nickel – see zones marked as red lines between Ridleys and Mt Cobalt in Figure 4.
Mount Cobalt – Mount Clara Nickel Oxide and Nickel-Copper Sulphide Prospect
At Mount Cobalt, a broad zone of nickel mineralisation has been identified above 0.3% Ni (open ended) over an area 250m long by 200m wide and more than 115m deep. The most recent drilling at Mount Cobalt targeted significant extensions to the nickel oxide mineralised zone and significant nickel values have been intersected in all drill holes.
The drilling has confirmed that the large Mt Cobalt nickel and cobalt deposit remains open to the north at hole COB 15 which intersected 82m @ 0.58% Ni and 0.015% Co from surface and dips northwards towards a magnetic high anomaly which is interpreted by geologists to be a nickel sulphide target. This magnetic feature appears to underlie the historic Mount Clara copper mines.
This large mineralised prospect is in extremely rugged terrain and requires construction of major drill access roads and completion of some land acquisitions currently in progress. It is scheduled to be extensively drilled after the completion of a fund raising via an Initial Public Offering (“IPO”) and listing of AusNiCo on the ASX, scheduled for 2009.
Project upsides
Project upsides include the strong magnetic target at 350m depth; highly encouraging metallurgy – 75% Ni recovery in 90 day acid leach test of the nickel oxides; the identification of new styles of mineralisation; and the advent of low pressure and temperature leaching offering the promise of a new nickel resource.
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Figure 1: Location of AusNiCo’s tenements |
Figure 2: Geological Model of the Black Snake plateau showing the geological setting of the mineralisation discovered by AusNiCo. |
Figure 3: Air photo of the Black Snake plateau showing the location of Pembroke, Silver Valley and Mount Cobalt Prospects and Shamrock Minesite |
Figure 4:
Geology of AusNiCo’s exploration area south of Kilkivan and prospect locations. The serpentinite belt is more than 70km long and up to 20kms wide. The nickel belts currently explored at Black Snake Plateau represent approximately 5% of the strike length of the nickeliferous serpentinite rocks. |
Figure 5:
Mt Cobalt Long Section Looking WSW. Note that the historic Mt Clara Copper Mine lies northwest (right) of this section – see Figure 6. |
Figure 6: Mt Cobalt drillhole locations and long section line plotted on air magnetics and soil geochemistry contours |
