Kingfisher Mining Limited announced that drilling is underway at its Mick Well REE project in the Gascoyne region of Western Australia. Drilling is underway at MW2, with the current program including 39 drill holes for approximately 4,000m. The drilling has been designed to target the high grade REE mineralisation at MW2, where rock chip results over 40% TREO have been returned and where mapping and sampling has delineated five parallel lodes of outcropping mineralisation within a 300m wide mineralised zone. The cumulative strike length of the five mineralised lodes within the MW2 mineralised zone is 3km, with all of the lodes remaining open in all directions. The mineralisation targeted in the current program is located 500m northwest of Kingfisher's discovery drilling in the MW2 area, where previously reported high grade results have included 5m at 3.45% TREO, including 3m at 5.21% TREO as well as 12m at 1.12% TREO, with 4m at 1.84% TREO. The current mapping and rock chipping work will continue during the drilling campaign and is targeting a large number of laterally-extensive high priority targets in a broad area that extends 10km west-northwest from MW2. The targets in this area are also associated with carbonatite complexes as well as high thorium and magnetic responses - similar to what is seen from the newly identified outcropping mineralisation at MW2. Significantly, all of these targets within this 10km long area also lie within Kingfisher's target corridor, the Chalba Shear Zone, which extends for 54km across the Company's Gascoyne tenure.
The Chalba Shear Zone is a broad WNW-trending crustal-scale structure that has played an important role in providing a conduit for the intrusion of the carbonatites, as well as the associated alteration and late-stage mineralised veins and carbonatite dykes. Fenites (carbonatite-associated alteration) and potassium fenites, are well-developed in the Mick Well area and are an important host of the REE mineralisation.