Preliminary data from a recently completed airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey has defined a number of late-time conductors up to 1km in length at DevEx Resources’ (ASX: DEV) Sovereign Project in Western Australia.
Managing Director, Brendan Bradley, said that importantly, the series of AEM conductors, associated with the 6 x 7km Sovereign Magnetic Complex and identified at the Kingsley, Mackenzie and Hudson Prospects, appear only in the late-time channels (Channels 16 to 22), supporting the likelihood of a series of buried bedrock conductors associated with the Sovereign Magnetic Complex.
The Sovereign Project is strategically located to the north of Chalice’s Julimar Project and south of Cassini Resources Limited’s Yarrawindah Brook Project. A recent AEM survey by Chalice has identified additional AEM conductors continuing north of the Gonneville Ni-Cu-PGE discovery at Hartog, Baudin, and Jansz – and just 20km south of the Sovereign Project.
The AEM survey was flown on 200m spaced east-west flight lines and focused on the large-scale Sovereign Magnetic Complex, where previous exploration results generated by DevEx have indicated the potential for underlying mafic-ultramafic rocks similar to the Julimar Complex.
These included re-assaying of historical bauxite (duricrust) drilling and surface duricrust rock chip sampling conducted by the Company, which returned individual assays of up to 1,210ppm nickel (Ni), 395ppm copper (Cu), 6,830ppm chromium (Cr) and 83ppb palladium + platinum (Pd+Pt) (see ASX announcement on 19th August 2020). A recent ground gravity survey further supports this interpretation, with broad gravity highs equally mapping the Sovereign Magnetic Complex.
The new AEM survey provides, for the first time, the ability to “see below” this extensive duricrust development and identify potential bedrock conductors which could be indicative of massive sulphides associated with nickel-copper-PGE mineralisation.
While EM conductors may also be caused by graphitic sediments and saline groundwater, DevEx considers their discrete association with supporting geochemical, magnetic and newly surveyed gravity anomalies to be very encouraging for the potential to discover significant Ni-Cu-PGE mineralisation within the Sovereign Project.
The final, processed AEM data (pending) will be used to plan ground-based moving loop electromagnetic (MLEM) surveys over the Kingsley, Mackenzie and Hudson Prospect areas.
It is anticipated that the ground MLEM data will provide better delineation of the position of the most favourable potential bedrock conductors, which will then lead into subsequent Reverse Circulation/diamond drilling in late 2020.