Future Battery Minerals has identified three new targets and extended its Big Red prospect to more than a 2.2km strike length using new resistivity data shot at its 100 per cent-owned Kangaroo Hills lithium project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region.
Management says the identification of Big Red North allows it to extend the resistivity profile of Big Red. Legacy lithium oxide drill hits at the target have gone as high as 27m at 1.32 per cent from 64m, 29m at 1.36 per cent from 38m and 22m at 1.24 per cent from 23m.
The three new targets – Whip Tail, Big Red West and Big Red North – have been added to the portfolio … and that’s just in the northern area.
The newly-mapped resistivity anomaly at Big Red West, about 500m west of the Big Red prospect, corresponds with intercepted mineralised pegmatites and nearby outcropping pegmatites. One drill assay from Big Red West went 6m at 1.38 per cent lithium oxide from 198m.
The company says the results of the resistivity survey has also shown an extension and refinement of pre-existing northern targets, Western Grey and Quokka, which are both coincident with mapped pegmatites.
Clear delineation of two new, higher order anomalies to the north of Big Red is a significant outcome, in an area which we are now calling Big Red North. It provides us with additional confidence that the northern extensional drilling of Big Red offers substantial upside opportunity to what we have already defined at Big Red and Rocky. Future Battery Minerals technical director Robin Cox.
Cox said the company had continued to progress environmental permitting to drill in the northern part of the project and was now at an advanced stage of evaluation. Preparations had already been made to allow drilling to begin on being granted the permitting and the work is scheduled for next year’s first quarter.
Future Battery’s non-ground-disturbing resistivity survey was conducted by infilling the previous survey data that was captured in 2021, via a reduction to 100m line spacing and 100m station spacing.
The company says petrophysical testing done on diamond cores from the Kangaroo Hills project show a clear difference in resistivity, density and velocity between the pegmatite and greenstone country rock, meaning gravity, seismic and resistivity methods may all be successful as exploration targeting tools to further refine drill targets.
The Kangaroo Hills project sits in an area known historically for its gold mineralisation, about 17km south of the Goldfields town of Coolgardie. Spodumene mineralisation within pegmatites in the project area was discovered by drilling late last year and since then, the company has been focussing on finding more of the silvery-white metal crucial for the globe’s energy transition.
So now on the agenda as management bounds into next year is the reverse-circulation (RC) drilling of the Big Red extension, in addition to Quokka, Big Red West, Big Red North and Western Grey. Diamond core and RC holes are also planned for Big Red to facilitate metallurgical testing and data to support a maiden mineral resource estimate.
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