No work took place on the renewed licence during its eleventh year to 11/4/2001, while the JV partners were awaiting resolution of six conflicting Native Title claims to the Ooldea area before they could have legal acess to EL 2710 to progress their planned exploration programme. Late in March 2001, a previously submitted work programme Declaration of Environmental Factors was approved by PIRSA, which had outlined several works needed to investigate the large target aeromagnetic anomaly mapped as lying in close proximity to the Karari Fault Zone on its north-western side. The intent was to define the ground position and characteristics of this anomaly, and to drill to test the bedrock lithologies responsible for generating it. During the twelfth licence year, in early April 2001, ground magnetic and gravity surveys were read over the Ooldea anomaly. The former consisted of continuously profiled readings taken at 10 cm intervals along 58 x 2.5 km long NW-SE traverses spaced 200 m apart, using a GPS directed quad bike towing a magnetometer on a trailer. The magnetic results confirmed and delineated the anomaly as having a strike extent of ~5 km and width of 300 m, and revealed that it terminates towards the south-west near traverse 1000300, but lies open to the north-east. The gravity survey was run along six interspersed and parallel traverses spaced 1 km apart, with readings made at 50 m intervals to yield 306 station points. The gravity data disclosed the position and the steep south-eastwards dip of the Karari Fault, and indicated that locally the depth to basement could be shallower than was previously thought, i.e. about 40 m. Drilling of the magnetic anomaly commenced in mid-April and ended 9 days later, after 1 vertical and 5 inclined RC holes had been completed for a total penetration of 1090 m. All six holes were located along a single fence on survey grid line 1002801, that crosses the peak of the >65,000 nT magnetic anomaly. Downhole geophysical logging of each borehole was attempted to try to measure magnetic susceptibility, plus natural gamma radiation to better define the lithostratigraphic profile in terms of sub-metre width magnetic lithologies. However, it was not possible to do full surveys of all the holes due to caving. The drilling confirmed evidence previously seen in core recovered from the SADME Ooldea 3 diamond drillhole that steeply dipping (85 degrees to SE), partially mylonitised and quartz veined quartz-magnetite gneiss units shallowly interspersed within the buried ?Mulgathing Complex are the cause of the magnetic anomaly. The top of weathered gneissic basement, beneath the Nullarbor Limestone, was reached at ~14 to 16 m depth, while fresh basement was encountered at close to the prognosed 40 m depth. Samples of all drill cuttings were collected in sample bags at 1 m intervals. These cuttings were then split as follows: • 795 approximately 25 kg bulk samples were bagged for dispatch to Mineralogy Pty Ltd in Brisbane; • 1090 approximately 1 kg samples of drill chips were screened and collected from the waste material as a lithological samples to use for in-house petrological studies; • 219 x 250 g samples were collected at 5 m intervals for taking hand-held magnetic susceptibility readings via a KT-9 instrument, as a field guide to the mineralisation. These samples were kept, to be dispatched to the PIRSA Core Library as representative samples; • 87 x 500 g samples were sent to the Midland Research Laboratory in the USA for Davis Tube Recovery (DTR) tests; and • 795 x 500 g samples were sent to the Analabs Laboratory in Perth for XRF analysis. During the thirteenth licence year, results were returned from the drillhole samples sent overseas for DTR tests. They showed that a magnetite concentrate assaying on average 70.54 % Fe and 0.84% SiO2 could be produced for sale from the Ooldea deposit. The data obtained by the existing drilling and downhole geophysical surveys were used by the licensee to make a preliminary resource estimate of 179.5 Mt of magnetite at 16.6% MagFe for the recently investigated portion of the deposit (the 5 km strike length so-called 'Baram' zone), taken to a mining depth of 200 m. By extrapolation to the entire 25 km strike length of the deposit, as indicated by the full extent of the Ooldea magnetic anomaly, a global resource of 882.8 Mt of magnetite was inferred. The latter resource figure was derived assuming that a mineralised lithostratigraphic / magnetostratigraphic unit logged in the 2001 exploration drillholes would maintain the same thickness and grade along strike. Making this critical assumption, in the licensee's view, did appear to be reliable for the following reasons: 1. Within the 2001 surveyed area, this situation seemed to be confirmed by the ground magnetic survey and gravity survey results. Furthermore, the earlier Offshore Diamond Mines A1 to A6 and 8500mE magnetic traverses [see Env 8290] seemed to show that a similar situation is maintained along strike for the entire deposit. 2. The main magnetite zone encountered in the historic SADME Ooldea 3 diamond drillhole (drill core interval 315 to 380 m) could be roughly correlated along strike with the mineralised zone found by Cosmo's COS 4 RC drillhole. During licence years 14 and 15, which were reported in combined format, new work done specifically on the Ooldea Magnetite Project consisted of Cosmo examining the technical and economic aspects of transporting iron ore concentrates by slurry pipeline over the 230 km distance between the deposit and Ceduna. This study was incomplete at the end of the 2005 reporting period. Also during this period, Cosmo joined with its parent company Mineralogy and other group companies who are developing projects for production of iron ore concentrate and pellets in Australia, to ascertain a valid project's technical definition and then, by comparing several such projects, decide what are the optimum operating and capital costs of a project for the production of iron ore concentrate and iron ore pellets. Work was undertaken on the basic engineering design and procurement planning of components for a concentrator and pellet plant, as well as outlining the necessary support services. This work will be completed in the next reporting period. The work was hampered by involving considerations subject to the increased construction costs currently applicable in Australia and the unstable price of steel. For Ooldea, additional drilling over the entire deposit is now planned to allow the current assumptions influencing the required processing route and related consumables to be fully tested before embarking on a final mining feasibility study. In a broader context, Mineralogy has been conducting a world-wide marketing study for the sale of high grade iron ore concentrate and iron ore pellets, which was nearly completed when globally, iron ore prices suddenly increased by 71% and the price of pellets increased by 86%. This required an immediate review of the economic assumptions underlying the study. Marketing and research visits were made to China during the period, and the study is now expected to be completed by the end of September 2005. The licensee also began assessing the possible heavy mineral sands (HMS) prospectivity of the tenement, by evaluating previous company data, conducting some site visits, and by engaging independent geological consultants to review the HMS exploration potential. Their findings are included as an appendix to the 2-year combined annual report on EL 2710. In brief, it was determined that recognised HMS prospective host Tertiary sediments from elsewhere in the onshore Eucla Basin are not known within EL 2710, and for reasons of Late Tertiary and Quaternary uplift and erosion, are unlikely to occur there with sufficient thickness to form the setting for preservation of a viable deposit, despite the licence area lying immediately adjacent to Iluka Resources' EL 2900 on which the large Jacinth and Ambrosia HMS deposits were recently discovered.