Following the receipt from DEM of ~A$194,000 in ADI grant funds, FMG Resources during the period January to April 2021 used them to help it acquire an approved infill ground gravity survey over the Roopena Fault Zone within four of its exploration...
Following the receipt from DEM of ~A$194,000 in ADI grant funds, FMG Resources during the period January to April 2021 used them to help it acquire an approved infill ground gravity survey over the Roopena Fault Zone within four of its exploration licences. A total of 18,799 gravity stations were read at 200 m and 100 m grid spacings to complement existing regional 500 m spaced gravity data that had been acquired for the company in early 2019. The Roopena Fault Zone is a geologically and structurally complex north-south tectonic corridor that separates major crustal domains in the south-central Gawler Craton, and which contains known primary copper mineral occurrences. Therefore it is of much interest to FMG Resources for its potential to host buried massive sulphide base metal deposits. However, following an initial geophysical appraisal it became clear that the resolution of the existing gravity dataset was insufficient to allow for defining robust exploration targets. Following receipt of the new gravity data, FMG Resources has been processing and interpreting them in-house to try to refine its solid geology and structural models for the fault zone. Its recent drilling done at the 1050E copper prospect had demonstrated the occurrence of Fe-sulphide Cu-Au (ISCG) style mineralisation within and adjacent to the fault zone. From evidence reported from elsewhere, this style of mineralisation is often found to be preserved as thin elongate tabular bodies that during their formation have exploited zones of rheological contrast within large fault structures. Taking this characteristic into account, the geophysical response of an ISCG occurrence recorded by a gravity survey could be very weak or non-existent depending on the survey's resolution. Indeed, the new ADI infill gravity survey data have revealed to FMG Resources the subtle nature of the gravity response over the 1050E prospect, that lies at the intersection of dominant N-S and NW-SE trending structures. Based on preliminary interrogation of the ADI gravity survey data, it appears that there are several repetitive structural intersections and subtle anomalies scattered along the Roopena Fault Zone. There are also several other anomalies present in the data originating from beyond the Roopena Fault Zone, which too will require investigation. These are being assessed with inputs from data of the detailed 100 m line spaced east-west aligned regional airborne magnetic and radiometric survey which was flown over the project acreage in early 2020. Moving forward, the 1050E prospect will be the immediate focus of detailed follow-up exploration such as electrical geophysical surveying and surface geochemical sampling, to try to decide if such methods are effective to use in defining ISCG targets in such a setting. If so, these methods can then be systematically deployed at a regional scale with the aim of identifying additional fertile mineral systems. Stakeholder engagement will continue in preparation for doing additional on-ground exploration work over identified anomalies, so as to progress any worthy target to a drill-ready status in the near future.
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