An area centred ~228 km south-southeast of Coober Pedy has been explored for possible buried IOCG type mineralisation, which could have formed in Mesoproterozoic basement rocks in a position which it was thought had not been properly tested by...
An area centred ~228 km south-southeast of Coober Pedy has been explored for possible buried IOCG type mineralisation, which could have formed in Mesoproterozoic basement rocks in a position which it was thought had not been properly tested by past drilling. The only work that was conducted on EL 6196 by licensee Squadron Resources (Squadron) comprised the drilling of a single vertical, rotary mud precollared, HQ3/NQ2 diamond cored hole to TD 875.6 m during September-October 2018. This hole, PHL0004MD, was collared at a position lying ~50 m away from the site of Iluka’s previously drilled PHL0001DD, also atop the I1 gravity anomaly (see Env 11776). PHL0004MD was drilled to test the residual gravity feature identified by Iluka’s 2016 constrained inversion of the ground gravity data, as had subsequently been modified by drill core density data which was obtained from PHL0001DD. But Squadron's recent re-inversion of the ground gravity data had clearly indicated that PHL0001DD, although it had been taken to a TD of 453.3 m, had not effectively tested the gravity feature. Squadron's new, much deeper hole was initially rotary mud drilled from surface to 52.6 m depth, just below the basement-cover unconformity, and this interval was cased off with removable heavy weight steel casing before diamond coring was commenced. This in its first stage was done using HQ3 equipment down to 389.5 m depth, and then was switched to NQ2 coring for the remaining 486.1 m of the hole. The basement rock sequence penetrated below the unconformity at 52 m depth was assigned to the Gawler Range Volcanics. The primary lithological variation seen in the drill core was thought to be limited to subtle changes in relative phenocryst abundance between quartz and feldspar, in what was interpreted as being essentially a quartz-feldspar phyric felsic volcanic rock. This unit has been variably overprinted by haematite, and virtually all of its feldspar phenocrysts are rendered pink from a drusy dust-like thin coating of haematite. The rock mass has subsequently been overprinted by sericite-quartz-pyrite and dark haematite-chlorite alteration, as seen to have developed within apparently structurally controlled zones. Multi-element assaying of 38 selected drill core samples did not return any results consistent with established characteristic geochemical vectors which are applicable to an IOCG mineralising system. Some sampled thin quartz-sulphide veins in earthy haematite altered rock cut over the interval 104.0 m to 104.5 m contained 1250 ppm Cu and 0.86 g/t Ag. Upon completion of PHL004MD, a re-interpretation of both constrained and unconstrained gravity inversion models was completed for Squadron by Southern Geoscience Consultants. The updated model took into account additional specific gravity measurements made on drill core basement rock samples from this hole. It was concluded that PHL0004MD intersected a style of haematite alteration that may be inferred to be the cause of the target I1 gravity anomaly. However, the hole had intersected an insufficient length of such material to explain the gravity anomaly, from a volumetric perspective. As the authors of previous reports about this prospect have suggested, the cluster of density anomalies resulting from the inversion and modelling processes undertaken for Phar Lap are not consistent with traits of a large IOCG deposit. The use of data modelling constraints, in general, leads to features with increased density being located at depth and becoming poorly defined. It was decided that no further work was warranted on the prospect, and application to fully surrender the subject licence was made on 13/9/2019.
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