During the sixth licence year, on renewed EL 2717 covering the same area as previously, the licensee, now a wholly owned subsidiary of AuIron Energy Limited (formerly Meekatharra Minerals Limited), progressed its investigations of the geology of the Ingomar coal deposit via the conduct of an additional campaign of exploratory drilling and downhole geophysical logging. Over the immediately preceding period March-April 2000, bulk sampling to obtain ~3.5 t of coal from the deposit had been performed by rotary drilling 27 partly cored vertical 200 mm diameter holes. This was now followed by infill delineation and stratigraphic drilling, with 41 open rotary mud holes plus 3 partly HQ cored holes put in to improve the understanding of the deposit's geology, particularly along the erosional subcrop edge of the Rankin seam where it abuts the unconformity with overlying Mesozoic fluvial sediments. In total 5851.33 m were drilled, of which 362.1 m were cored at either HQ (61 mm), 100 mm or 200 mm diameters. Between March and May 2001, a 30 m deep trial pit was excavated on Retention Lease 104 at Ingomar to extract a 16,000 t coal sample to send for testing in the Ausmelt Pilot Plant at Whyalla. Coal analysis was undertaken on 116 samples collected during the later drilling and the trial pit sampling, of which 28 x 5 kg grab samples were taken at 10 m lateral intervals from along ~75% of the pit wall seam exposures, and 4 from the run-of-mine bulk sample pad where the coal had been left to dry out for from 1 to 4 days. Two vertical faces within the pit were channel sampled at 1-metre vertical intervals following a request made by PIRSA, and the double bagged and sealed rock chip samples were submitted to the PIRSA Drill Core Library as reference material. During the seventh licence year, over the period October to December 2001, a drilling program consisting of 27 open rotary mud holes plus 8 partly HQ cored holes, 3 partly cored 100 mm diameter holes and 3 cased piezometer holes, was performed to gain further geotechnical and hydrogeological data, besides supporting the aim of increasing the measured coal resource held within the Rankin seam to ~100 Mt, by extending the proven coal mapping for ~5 km along strike towards the north-west. A similar thickness of coal was encountered in these holes. It was recommended that a maiden JORC-compliant coal reserve figure should be estimated for Ingomar. During the eighth licence year, in July 2002, a drilling appraisal was made of the Corner Gate coal deposit to improve the understanding of its geology, particularly with regard to cover thickness and related coal-to-waste ratios of any potentially open pit mineable resource. 11 open rotary mud holes for 1499 m were drilled and downhole geophysically logged: this metreage total includes 87 m of HQ coring in one hole, APC160. 39 ply samples collected from this hole's drill core were submitted for laboratory analysis of the coal quality. The new drillhole data helped to support the modelled resource of ~450 Mt, and it was recommended that a maiden JORC-compliant coal reserve figure should be estimated. Around 200 Mt of the coal appears to be contained within the uppermost four persistent seams, which lie at <80 m depth and present an average vertical waste-to-coal ratio of <6:1. In the latter part of this year, AuIron Energy entered into negotiations with a potential farminee. During the ninth licence year, farm-in negotiations were continued throughout, and in consequence no work was done on the subject EL 2717. During the tenth licence year, in May 2004, NRG Flinders Operating Services Pty Ltd entered into an option agreement for EL 2717 and RLs 100 and 104 with licence holder Felix Resources Ltd (formerly AuIron Energy Limited) which is effective for a period of up to six years, and took over the management of EL 2717 after 10/6/2004. For some time prior to the farm in, there had already been liaison between the licence holder and NRG Flinders because the latter was regarded as a likely purchaser of Lake Phillipson Project coal, and so it had been granted access to the confidential results of many of the technical investigations relating to the coalfield because of the need to assess via feedback the coal's suitability for electrical power generation. At the outset of its involvement, NRG Flinders recognised that one of the most important issues affecting the potential for using Lake Phillipson coal at its Augusta and Northern power stations was the high salt content of the raw coal. It was well known in the generation industry that this coal was entirely unsuitable for use in a conventional coal-fired power plant which was not specifically designed to handle it, because the excessive sodium and chlorine contents would engender unworkable levels of boiler ash deposition and corrosion. Now being committed to try to circumvent this problem, the company saw the need to undertake more focussed and methodical beneficiation tests to properly understand and hopefully successfully implement a salt removal process. A plan for conducting further leaching experiments was formulated, and it was decided that suitable fresh coal samples could only be obtained from the now buried remains of the Ingomar trial pit stockpile, located in trenches onsite. No field work occurred during this reporting year. During the eleventh licence year, NRG Flinders was able to locate and retrieve a number of uncontaminated large coal lumps from the soil covered disposal trenches, and promptly placed them into 10 x plastic lined 200 l drums for transport to Adelaide, to minimise any impact of sample drying. Upon arrival in Adelaide at the company's Osborne laboratory, all of the coal lumps were crushed to between 50 mm and 100 mm particle size and returned to the drums for storage. One drumful of the coal was sent to the CSIRO to undergo a series of fundamental leaching studies, to establish in detail what parameters affect the efficiency of the leaching operation as measured by sodium removal. Once this study was completed, a follow up program of larger scale tests, beneficiation plant flow sheet design and financial modelling was undertaken. One factor found to be of concern was the amount of water required to achieve the beneficiation result. The reports on all of the tests done were subject to IP creation legal use controls that are solely vested in the consultant organisations, and consequently were not expected to be made available publically until mid-2010. During the twelfth licence year, under tenure of renewed EL 3386 still covering the same area as was originally granted in 1995, farminee NRG Flinders continued to conduct a peer review of coal beneficiation and cost studies undertaken for the Lake Phillipson Project deposits, on behalf of licence holder Felix Resources, but no report was forthcoming. No other work was done. It was thought that further drilling must be done to define possible extensions to the known coal measures and to find areas with less sodium salt contained within the coal. Also, Felix Resources said that the metallic mineral prospectivity of the buried basement rocks within the tenement area should be reviewed, looking for evidence of IOCG-U mineral forming systems, since these rocks may be similar to those of the Mount Woods Inlier. During the thirteenth licence year, Felix Resources set up an exploration office in Adelaide staffed by one geologist, who was directed to conduct background research and compile historic data applicable to the chosen IOCG-U mineralisation search, and to devise an exploration strategy and commence building relationships with key land access stakeholders. Several consultants and contractors were engaged to perform geological reviews and to schedule the clearances for and prepare for imminent acquisition of ground geophysical surveys, the first such being a detailed gravity survey across interpreted basement highs in the north of the licence area. David Tonkin was commissioned in November 2007 to investigate potential mineralisation types which might exist in the basement rocks of the Coober Pedy Ridge and Mount Woods Inlier located on EL 3386, and later, Martin Hand was asked in June 2008 to make a structural and geochronological analysis of those rocks. He dated three samples of stored drill cores taken from separate holes, using two different techniques dictated by the size of the samples made available. In each case the radiometric dating studies revealed three separate groups of ages that correspond well with known major crust-forming events that have occurred in this region of the central northern Gawler Craton; firstly the Kimban Orogeny, then the Ooldean high pressure metamorphic event, and finally the age of emplacement of the Hiltaba Suite intrusive felsic igneous rocks. Importantly also, coal industry specialists Gemcom Software were engaged over the period June to August 2008 to conduct an in-depth review of the status, quality of information about, and economic potential of the Ingomar and Corner Gate coal deposits, and to compile a remodelled JORC compliant resource for both of these deposits, plus a global resource basin-wide. During the fourteenth licence year, in July 2009, a JORC coal resource of 514.9 Mt was reported for all of the Lake Phillipson Trough by Gemcom Software, consisting of 354.5 Mt in the Inferred category, 145.7 Mt in the Indicated category, and 14.7 Mt in the Measured category. Over the period September 2008 to February 2009, a detailed ground gravity survey totalling 8909 stations was read on seven 200 m x 200 m grids, infilled in places to 50 m x 50 m precision, as well as along two SE-NW traverses spaced 2.5 km apart which crossed the Garford Palaeochannel, with readings made at 25 m station intervals. The gridded gravity data were used to locate drilling sites for testing the IOCG-U potential of underlying unknown basement rocks. Between March and May 2009, reconnaissance drilling of the basement was conducted via 15 rotary mud - precollared, inclined or vertical HQ/NQ2 diamond cored holes for 3591 m, which included 2765 m of coring. All of the core was logged, photographed and had magnetic susceptibility measurements taken from it at 1-metre hole depth intervals. 950 samples were laboratory assayed for 29 elements. Eleven of the holes were wireline geophysically logged. The drilling disclosed the presence of Mount Woods Domain and Christie Domain felsic, intermediate, mafic and possible ultramafic variably altered intrusive igneous rocks, and high metamorphic grade metasedimentary basement rocks containing weakly anomalous zinc and copper. In June 2009, a 5606 line km fixed wing airborne magnetic/radiometric/DTM survey was flown along 100 m spaced north-south flight lines using a 50 m mean sensor height above the ground surface, to profile two target areas within EL 3386 for allowing a better interpretation of the basement structural setting. During the fifteenth licence year, access continued to be denied by the Commonwealth Government's Department of Defence (DOD) to about 70% of the licence area, after a policy of not allowing exploration to occur within the Woomera Prohibited Area south of 30ºS was introduced late in 2008 for companies that made application to DOD for new Deeds of Access. Because of this, Felix Resources was forced to only do desktop study work to progress its exploration objectives. In October 2009, consultant geophysicist Keith Jones was commissioned to perform an interpretation of the June 2009 surveys' data after they were merged with earlier survey datasets, to try to define IOCG targets. He noted that there were some untested 2-3 mGal amplitude residual gravity anomalies lying proximal to the Hiltaba-aged felsic intrusions encountered by the recent diamond drilling. A possible undrilled occurrence of the Gawler Range Volcanics associated with an interpreted demagnetised major N-S shear zone in the west of EL 3386 warranted immediate investigation. Also, a still untested 3500 nT magnetic anomaly located near Lake Phillipson remained a priority target. Potential for Archaean BIF-related, possibly Broken Hill type lead-zinc mineralisation, for mafic-ultramafic magmatic nickel sulphides, and for Proterozoic lode gold associated with major faults, was also identified. However, all of the prospective areas now lay within the WPA exclusion zone. In October 2009, a report discussing utilisation options for Lake Phillipson coal was received from the CSIRO. The options were ranked according to their applicability for handling both as-mined or treated coal from there. It was suggested that the option of putting the as-mined coal through a circulating fluidised bed combustor needed to be assessed via experimentation, using clay-based additives and ballast material in the furnace bed. Alternatively, if a suitable leaching process to remove the NaCl and other salts from the coal were to be forthcoming, then a conventional pulverised fuel combustion process could suffice to make the coal burn in a trouble-free manner. In November 2009, 54 basement drill core samples recovered from the recent diamond drilling were studied petrographically and classified according to their lithology, igneous and metamorphic textures, alteration and mineralisation, and petrogenetic affinities. One important outcome of this work was the observation that the metamorphic grade of the Coober Pedy Ridge south-western marginal rocks is less than formerly assumed, being from greenschist to amphibolite grade rather than granulite facies; this means that these rocks are potentially more prospective. In February 2010, a 1:50k scale map photointerpretation of surficial geology was made using the previously acquired ALOS (Advanced Land Observation Satellite) AV and near-infrared wavelength pseudo-stereo images. The map will be used to guide the selection of optimum locations for doing planned soil calcrete geochemical sampling.