Australian mining exploration company St George Mining Limited has commenced an exploration program at the Woolgangie project, located in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, which will focus on the exploration of lithium, rare earths and copper targets at the site.
This will be St George’s first field program at Woolgangie and it will involve aircore drilling, an airborne magnetic survey, a ground-based electromagnetic survey and soil surveys.
The project tenure comprises of a dominant landholding of 3,350 square kilometres in an underexplored region of the Coolgardie Mineral Field and takes in over 90 kilometres of the Ida Fault — a major crustal boundary that controls multiple major minerals deposits within Western Australia.
St George’s Mining Executive Chairman John Prineas said: “We are delighted to announce that we have commenced field work at Woolgangie, an exciting project that St George only acquired in February. Woolgangie offers an excellent opportunity for a new discovery in an area of the Eastern Goldfields that has seen very limited exploration other than for gold and nickel.
“Woolgangie is an example of how St George is building out our portfolio of highly prospective exploration assets to deliver a pipeline of value-creating opportunities for shareholders.
“The project is located in a Tier 1 mineral hotspot and – for the first time – is being worked over using modern exploration methods to fully investigate the potential for economic mineralisation,” said Prineas.
Multiple lithium pegmatite outcrops have been identified across the project tenure and there has been no prior lithium exploration conducted at the project.
The priority exploration target is an area of approximately 25 kilometres long, adjacent to the western margin of the established lithium region, that hosts several major lithium mines including Mineral Resources’ Mt Marion mine (71.3 metric tonnes at 1.37 per cent lithium oxide).
Field mapping, soil surveys and rock chip sampling of lithium pegmatite targets are currently underway at the project site.
Historic drilling at Woolgangie have identified wide zones of rare earth elements (REE), including 84 metres at 470 parts per million (ppm) cerium-lanthium-yttrium (Ce+La+Y) from 96 metres (WRC016) and 24 metres at 649ppm Ce+La+Y from eight metres (WRC014).
There is currently a 2,500 metre aircore (AC) drill program underway to test for ionic clay-hosted REE mineralisation across an area of 55 square kilometres.
Wide zones of copper mineralisation were intersected by historical drilling designed to test an electromagnetic (EM) conductor including 50 metres at 0.20 per cent copper from 80 metres (WRC003).
At present there will be no follow-up exploration despite extensive copper sulphides encountered by drilling.
St George will complete a ground-based moving loop EM survey to better model prospective EM conductors ahead of drilling plans.
“In parallel to Woolgangie, we are planning the next phase of lithium exploration at the Mt Alexander project as well as our maiden field programs for the lithium prospective tenements recently acquired through our subsidiary, Lithium Star Pty Limited. We will be announcing more about these field programs soon,” said Prineas.
These other lithium-focused exploration programs are planned for Q4 2023.
