Highlights
Napperby Project, Northern Territory, Australia
The Napperby Project is located within the highly prospective Arunta Province, which is endowed with some of the most prospective rocks for lithium (Li), Rare Earth Elements (REEs) and uranium (U) mineralisation in the Northern Territory.
As announced on 21 February 2024, the Paleoproterozoic Wangala and Ennugan Mountains granites have long been recognised as “Hot Granites” and known to be anomalously enriched in a range of elements including U, thorium and REEs. Both granite plutons show outstanding uranium/thorium ratios and are almost fully encapsulated within Oceana’s Napperby Project leases EL32836 and ELA32841 (under application), as shown in Figure 1.
A soil geochemistry infill sampling program was completed during the December quarter in the southeast corner of EL32836 to better define and understand the lithium anomalies highlighted by the 2022 soil sampling program (refer to ASX Announcement dated 28 November 2022).
A total of 107 samples were collected in the last campaign at 200m spacings for approximately 30 line-km, infilling the previous 2km line spacing to 500m. Although initially targeting lithium, the results from the soil sampling have defined a large arcuate uranium anomaly, as shown in Figure 2.
The uranium anomaly is mostly covered by Quaternary sediments and residual soils. The relatively low absolute values for the anomaly (500 – 3,680ppb U) are the result of using mobile metal ion sampling techniques which enables field teams to sample large areas without the need to carry large heavy samples around in the field. Because the samples are not crushed and pulverized, it is only unbound or weakly attached metal ions that are removed from soils and as such it is not the absolute values of elements that are of interest but the relative differences of values within a given data set.
Modelling and interpretation of the available hyperspectral data at Napperby was completed by HyVista Pty Ltd (HyVista). Modelling of the geochemical alteration zones interpreted from the hyperspectral data relative to the uranium surface anomaly confirmed that the anomaly has the potential to host significant “roll-front” type uranium mineralisation.
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