PACE Discovery Drilling (drilling partnerships with DSD and industry): Year 8 partnership DPY8-06 - Intercept Hill, Stuart Shelf, Mesoproterozoic IOCGU mineral prospects. Drilling project final report.
Published: 19 Jan 1916 Created: 12 Nov 2024 Revised: 12 Nov 2024

EL 5372 Intercept Hill is centrally located in the world class Olympic Dam Iron Oxide Cu-Au-U Province, at the centre of a cluster of iron oxide copper occurrences including Emmie Bluff, Oak Dam and Winjabbie. The Intercept Hill area has available...

EL 5372 Intercept Hill is centrally located in the world class Olympic Dam Iron Oxide Cu-Au-U Province, at the centre of a cluster of iron oxide copper occurrences including Emmie Bluff, Oak Dam and Winjabbie. The Intercept Hill area has available extensive open file data as a result of many years of exploration, an effort that also produced structural and anomaly interpretations around many deep drillholes. However, in the main follow-up drilling has not been performed to fully test those interpretations - and any such work if done now should include thorough geochemical analyses of the rocks encountered. Red Tiger Resources (RTR) plans to fully explore its Intercept Hill ground, with an initial focus on the area referred to as Emmie North. The company aims to conduct a staged five-year programme to infill drill, stepout/offset drill and 'blue sky' drill up to 11 prospective areas already identified through a combination of advanced geophysical modelling done by Jim Hanneson, geochemical modelling and assessment of existing drill core done by Scott Halley, and geological structural interpretation done by Chris Anderson. RTR intends to carry out its first stage of drilling over the period February 2014 to February 2016, when between one and four drillholes will be completed to infill between widely spaced existing holes wherein mineralisation has been discovered, these being places where the probability of finding additional mineralisation is highest. It is hoped that the proposed work will lead to an enhanced geological understanding of the Emmie Bluff / Emmie North mineralised district, by facilitating alteration and geochemical footprint mapping of basement rocks and geochemical dispersion patterns at the base of sedimentary cover as an extension to significant similar mineral systems mapping work already being undertaken for the region. Ultimately the envisaged drilling project will create the opportunity, across eleven areas, for the application and evaluation of technology in geophysical exploration modelling combined with geochemical and geological structural interpretation to refine further drilling targets. At Emmie Bluff, a priority 'Blue Sky' target area was selected by RTR for initial exploratory drilling, since it proposed to test a newly modelled dense body within basement, lying between 750 and 1050 m depth, that lay to the north-west of all existing drilling. Of particular geological significance was the likely continuation of a major north-west aligned thrust fault identified in earlier drilling done to the south. This fault, and the hydrothermal breccia identified by Argo Exploration in its nearby June 2007 drillhole IHAD4, gave strong support to the idea that the ~1 mGal residual anomaly target body could represent a strongly IOCG mineralised centre. Furthermore, the latest regional aeromagnetic data provided evidence of a possible regional setting for finding analogues of Carrapateena / Khamsin / Oak Dam style deposits, with the non-magnetic nature of such haematite-rich deposits being a critical parameter. Following the advertised call made by DSD late in 2014 for companies to submit proposals for participation in PACE Discovery Drilling 2015, RTR was successful in securing a partial subsidy from the SA Government, via an agreement announced in mid-April 2015 by the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, granted to assist it with drilling a proposed single deep vertical diamond drillhole to around 1100 m depth to test the Intercept Hill Blue Sky gravity target. During October-November 2015, drillhole 15RTDD-BS1 was completed to a total depth of 1098 m for RTR by contractor Coughlan Drilling Pty Ltd, having successfully penetrated the Stuart Shelf cover sequence and tested the geophysical target. The hole was rotary mud precollared to 9 m depth, then was diamond cored with HQ rods to 279.5 m depth, before being continued to TD using NQ2 rods. It encountered the following (tentative) stratigraphic sequence: 0 – 30.9 m : Arcoona (Simmons) Quartzite 30.9 – 180.6 m : Tregolana Shale 180.6 – 181.2 m : Nuccaleena Formation (dolomitic) 181.2 – 345.5 m : Whyalla Sandstone 345.5 – 942.4 m : Pandurra Formation 942.4 – 1076.2 m : Coarse grained, variably altered granite (?Donington Suite) 1076.2 –1098.0 m : Unaltered pink granite. Within the Pandurra Formation, numerous bands of haematitic siltstones, along with conglomerates and breccia zones, were intersected from approximately 520 m depth to the basement unconformity at 942.4 m. These presented difficulties for the diamond drilling, causing poor core recovery and loss of water return. Magnetic susceptibility readings were made on all of the core recovered from the hole, and although the values are generally low, a zone of elevated magnetic response coincides with the lower portion of the altered granite basement, from 1008 to 1076 m depth. Anomalous Cu-Co-U-Fe is associated with haematitic zones within the Pandurra Formation at 900 and 920 m depth. Stronger Cu mineralisation within the altered basement granite is associated with narrow veins of sulphide (predominantly chalcopyrite, with possible minor bornite at 996 m) seen over the depth interval 975-1005 m. Interestingly, this interval is clearly lower in iron (and magnetic susceptibility) than the lower portion of this altered granite, suggesting that perhaps the copper was introduced with a later mineralising fluid which overprinted the precursor iron-rich alteration. Nevertheless, the zone of elevated Fe assayed between 880 and 1050 m depth appears to coincide reasonably well with the target depths determined from the gravity model. Uranium is only very weakly anomalous in the altered granite, and cobalt is absent, which suggests that the geochemically anomalous intervals within the Pandurra Formation reflect a different mineral assemblage. In conclusion, RTR believe that hole 15RTDD-BS1 has been successful in delineating a valid residual gravity target that had previously been masked by the strong regional gravity gradient. Subsequently, expert petrological examination of the drill core will be required in order to establish if the alteration and associated low order mineralisation within the “basement” granite is consistent with the margins of an IOCG mineralising system. Additional untested, possibly haematite-dominant residual gravity anomalies have been delineated to the north-west and north of the Blue Sky anomaly, and it is considered that further assessment of these features is warranted. The detailed residual gravity data assessment has also outlined a dense basement feature centred between existing drillholes IHAD1 and IHAD4 in the Arcoona Dam area. Hole IDDDH01 has been proposed to test this gravity target.

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About this record

Record No mesac27115
Topic Geoscientific Information
Type of Resource Document
Category Type
Document Type Mineral Company Report - Mineral Exploration
Contributor Euro Exploration Services Pty Ltd
Sponsor Red Tiger Resources Ltd
Tenement EL 5372
Tenement Holder White Tiger Resources Limited
Operator Red Tiger Resources Ltd
Geological Province
Mine Name Emmie Bluff prospect;Blue Sky priority drilling target
Stratigraphy
Commodity
Notes
Notes: PACE project code DPY8-06 : company final submission includes exploration drilling actual total cost ($218,019.00 excluding Goods and Services Tax), out of which PACE Initiative funds have paid $110,000.00 (excl. GST).
Geographic Locality:...

Notes: PACE project code DPY8-06 : company final submission includes exploration drilling actual total cost ($218,019.00 excluding Goods and Services Tax), out of which PACE Initiative funds have paid $110,000.00 (excl. GST). Geographic Locality: Intercept Hill;Arcoona Station Doc No: Env 12954 Drillhole: Argo Resources IHAD4;(262026);PACE DPY8-06 drillhole 15RTDD-BS1;(290582)

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Language English
Metadata Standard ISO 19115-3

Citations

Use constraints License
License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
Persistent identifier https://pid.sarig.sa.gov.au/document/mesac27115
Citation Nesbitt, M. 1916. PACE Discovery Drilling (drilling partnerships with DSD and industry): Year 8 partnership DPY8-06 - Intercept Hill, Stuart Shelf, Mesoproterozoic IOCGU mineral prospects. Drilling project final report. Mineral Company Report - Mineral Exploration
https://pid.sarig.sa.gov.au/document/mesac27115

Technical information

Status
Maintenance and Update Frequency
Geographic Reference GDA2020 (EPSG:7844)
Geo bounding box {"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[137,-31.5],[137.5,-31.5],[137.5,-31],[137,-31],[137,-31.5]]]}
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Lineage