During licence Year 16, on its renewed EL 4534 over the period October to December 2010, South Australian Coal Limited (SA Coal) undertook a drilling campaign of 15 rotary mud partly cored vertical holes for 2871 m which included 2064.7 m of...
During licence Year 16, on its renewed EL 4534 over the period October to December 2010, South Australian Coal Limited (SA Coal) undertook a drilling campaign of 15 rotary mud partly cored vertical holes for 2871 m which included 2064.7 m of coring, to look for low strip ratio coal resources in that part of the tenement lying outside of the WPA exclusion zone which was imposed in 2008 by the Australian Commonwealth Government's Department of Defence (DOD). The results of this drilling enabled making an 169 Mt increase to the JORC compliant global coal resource figure for the Lake Phillipson Project, as announced by SA Coal in March 2011: that figure now became 684 Mt, at an average waste-to-coal stripping ratio of 10:1. The exact site for starting the drilling was chosen based on the records of previous coal exploration undertaken by Meekatharra Minerals, and aimed to test the lateral continuity of a then interpreted intersection of 2.22 m of Rankin seam coal made at 122.5 m depth in drillhole MP27. In actuality, the Rankin seam is not present in the 2010 drilled area, as it transpired: the main (thickest) seam which was appraised and sampled is the stratigraphically higher Lake seam, which consequently led to higher than expected strip ratios for the coal delineated. During licence Year 17, activities comprised a similar drilling, logging, analytical and resource calculation programme to that which was undertaken the year before, performed with the same objectives but with a larger focus area made possible once the DOD temporarily allowed the company to have access onto the entire tenement area during the period 18/7/2011 to 29/2/2012. By the end of the period August to December 2011, SA Coal had completed the drilling of another 68 rotary mud partly cored vertical holes for 12,041.74 m, which included 4903.24 m of HQ3 coring within 36 holes, that served to increase the project's modelled JORC global coal resource by 446 Mt to 1130 Mt, still limited to a strip ratio shell of 10:1. The main economic seams which were intersected by the above programme included the Ingomar, Long Creek, Lake, Mabel, Phillipson Upper 1, Phillipson, Phillipson Middle 1, Lower Phillipson, Pioneer, Lower Pioneer, Upper Rankin and Rankin. All of the latest drillholes were designed to penetrate further down section, into the base of the Wirrida seam, to give a stratigraphic datum point that would be applicable for future basin wide correlation purposes. In addition, at this same time another 3 RC precollared diamond cored holes, DD11WEC16 - DD11WEC18 totalling 262.54 m (76.84 m cored), were drilled to determine the depth and type of basement subcropping ~15 km west of Lake Phillipson, to inform the existing geophysical model outlining IOCG mineralisation targets. They each encountered relatively undeformed Balta Granite equivalents attributed to emplacement within the Mount Woods Inlier. During licence Year 18, over the period 9/9/2012 to 19/10/2012 when temporary unhindered land access onto the northern part of the WPA exclusion zone was again allowed by the DOD, SA Coal undertook soil calcrete and mobile metal ion (MMI) surface geochemical sampling on 500 m and 250 m grid spacings to help define possible Archaean lode gold targets and younger IOCG targets at regional basement highs along the tenement's southern, western and northern edges. Only a few elevated but isolated gold results were returned from the 544 regional calcrete samples, peaking at 13 ppb Au: the 289 MMI samples' assay value dataset that was obtained over the Coober Pedy Ridge did not contain any anomalies. Coal exploratory drillhole geochemical and lithological logs were finalised for the 2010 and 2011 drilling programmes, after the related coal sample composite analysis results were received in May 2013. SA Coal successfully processed a Lake Phillipson coal sample which had been recovered from RL 104 at the White Energy Company briquetting facility in Cessnock. During licence Year 19, in September 2013, SA Coal completed documenting a landscape function analysis (LFA) survey which was conducted in the spoil pile located adjacent to the coal mining trial pit on RL 104. The LFA survey of vegetation growth and faunal use was done to keep the retention lease in good standing as a viable commercial asset for future SA Coal operations, and followed on from an initial similar survey done in August 2008. Rehabilitation of an erosional channel which had formed in the north-eastern corner of the spoil pile was performed in October 2013, to mitigate any ongoing damage that may occur to the batter before it is covered by re-established vegetation. During licence Year 20, a review was made by consultant Keith Jones of the existing SA Coal gravity data once they had been combined with recently released data from the SA Government's 2013 Gawler Craton (Woomera Prohibited Area) Gravity Survey [part of a large data atlas created to promote the untapped mineral potential thought to exist for the WPA - see RB 2013/00020]. Two additional targets with IOCG or other metallic mineralisation potential were identified for follow-up work, that initially will comprise close-spaced ground magnetic survey and infill ground gravity survey acquisition. Plans were made to drill 22 further coal exploration holes in two areas of the north-eastern Lake Phillipson Trough. Work also continued on coal utilisation studies and commercialisation options related to the Lake Phillipson Coal Deposit. An application for renewal of licence tenure over another 5-year term was submitted to DSD in March 2015.
More +