US iron ore – global expertise
Richmond Mining is focused on the development of the Company’s 100% owned Buena Vista magnetite project. Located in the mining friendly state of Nevada in the United States the project offers investors a low risk entry into an emerging steel mill feedstock.
The United States provides mining companies with well situated and established infrastructure with road, rail and port facilities all in place. For Buena Vista, this established infrastructure reduces the development costs by well in excess of a billion dollars and significantly shortens the time taken to get the project into production.
Richmond has already completed the definitive feasibility study and is now engaged in discussions with banks and other potential providers of finance for the development of Buena Vista. In conjunction with an active programme to secure the remaining mining and environmental permits Richmond anticipates that production will commence within 12-15 months of the securing of final finance. At this stage the first half of calendar 2013 is the targeted date for the commencement of production.
Inclusive to the many advantages inherent in BuenaVista are the low capital cost, the very low risk political environment, the cash costs which are equivalent to or better than the majority of emerging magnetite producers and the relatively short time to production. The project also represents a much lower operational risk than most emerging producers because of the proposed scale of production.
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Richmond Mining targets extensions of Buena Vista iron Resource
Tuesday 24 January 2012
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Throssell
into the project area in 2005 and is currently earning a 50% interest. The Throssell project is held by two granted tenements and four tenement applications. The exploration area lies at the northeast margin of the Yilgarn Craton and is located 420km northeast of Kalgoorlie.
The project area has limited outcrop and is largely covered by lake sediments or Recent alluvium. The superficial sediments in turn overlie sediments of the Officer Basin. The Throssell tenements cover an area of anomalous magnetics and gravity. A number of these anomalous zones are co-incident and it is conjectured that this may mark Archaean greenstone lithologies or possible mineralisation within Proterozoic sediments. Limited historic drilling indicates that the overlying Officer Basin sediments could be less than 100 metres thick through much of the Throssell project area. This makes these geophysical targets an attractive and economic exploration proposition.
There has been minimal historic exploration work completed within the project area because of the belief that it is covered by thick basin sediments and that it overlies unprospective granitic terrain.
Some evidence however, suggests that these sediments may be much thinner than first thought and the coincident magnetic and gravity anomalies therefore represent drillable targets Potential geophysical parallels with deep targets being tested by explorers in the Gawler Craton and adjacent to the Albany-Fraser mobile belt, provide additional credence to the exploration model at Throssell.
Lake Throssell is a significant drainage as well as depositional system. The lake system within the tenements area alone covers around 75 kms and drains a significant area of granitic terrain. Past reconnaissance has identified possible uranium minerals with this lake system. An exploration programme to confirm this mineralogy and to seek sites where mineralisation may have been accumulated along the lake edges and within sites marked by constrictions or changes of trend within the lake channel, will be investigated.
Narracoota - Western Australia
Sandfire Resources’ (ASX Code: SFR) DeGrussa copper-gold discovery appears to be a volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit and is hosted within rocks of the Narracoota Volcanics. Richmond Mining’s Narracoota project contains extensive widths of Narracoota Volcanics that are interpreted to occur in at least three structural repetitions, providing a target zone of approximately 20km in length.
Within the strike extension of the main structural repetition lays the Bilyuin magnetic anomaly. This is a large magnetic feature (approximately 5km long and averages 1 km in width) associated with a volcanic breccia complex outlined in the southern part of the tenement from geophysical data and limited historic drilling.
The Bilyuin magnetic anomaly, coincident with a prominent regional gravity high, is interpreted to be an ancient volcanic centre and could be a possible heat source for the remobilisation of metals, if any are present in the area. Consequently the breccia could be the ideal host for possible VMS style Cu-Au or Cu-Zn-Pb-Au-Ag systems.
Richmond’s prior exploration focus at Narracoota has been on delineating structurally controlled gold mineralisation. The company drilled 20 aircore holes on widely spaced traverse lines into the Bilyuin anomaly as a geochemical test for gold in the weathered rocks beneath the extensive alluvial cover across a number of structural features associated with the breccia and fault zone within the anomaly.
No significant gold results were returned, however, the best intercept was 2m @ 0.08 g/t gold from 80-82 metres in a weakly foliated, weakly weathered basalt; 100 – 200 metres south of an interpreted NW trending structure. The aircore drilling also highlighted that much of the historic drilling over the anomaly was probably ineffective as a result of misinterpretation of alluvial clays as weathered bedrock.
The most significant discovery made over recent years in the vicinity of the Narracoota project is the DeGrussa copper-gold discovery at Doolgunna.
The DeGrussa prospect was being explored for gold mineralisation, which was reported as being associated with a pyritic shear hosted in strongly weathered and oxidised saprolitic basalt. In follow up testing for extensions of the gold zone at DeGrussa it was reported that drilling had intersected significant intervals of high grade gold and copper mineralisation within and beneath the previously delineated oxide gold zone.
Similar DeGrussa style mineralised structures could exist on E52/1496 and have easily been missed by the wide spaced drilling, as the surface projection of the >0.1 g/t gold mineralised shear zone at DeGrussa is shown as being only 40m wide.
Richmond’s exploration effort will now focus on the potential for the Narracoota Volcanics in E52/1496 to host VMS copper-gold mineralisation.
Also within the tenement and bounding the Narracoota Volcanics are sediments that are potentially important in the VMS exploration model, as they provide additional depositional sites for mineralising fluids.
Although the Narracoota project has had an active exploration history, previous explorers have been hampered because much of the area is covered by transported sediments that overlie a thick leached weathering profile.
Four known prospects and mines (Durack Well, Wembley, Mikhaburra and Cashman) lie very close to the Narracoota tenement boundaries.
Approximately 1km from the southern boundary is the old Cashman copper mine that produced 7t of copper ore grading 16.5% copper. Immediately surrounding the Cashman deposit is a number of small mineral occurrences and deposits, which contain copper and copper-gold.
The Mikhaburra gold deposit, also known as Holdens Find, is also located approximately 1km from the southern boundary and is hosted in volcanic rocks of the Narracoota Formation. Total recorded production of the Mikhaburra mine was about 226 kilograms of gold and mineralisation is associated with a system of auriferous quartz veins emplaced along a shear zone.
Richmond’s Narracoota project has the right rock types that host nearby mineralisation and presents a significant copper-gold target along strike from the DeGrussa discovery.
The initial exploration for VMS copper-gold mineralisation in the Narracoota Volcanics within E52/1496 will rely on geophysics techniques that can detect this style of mineralisation beneath the thick transported cover and deeply weathered regolith profile. An airborne electromagnetic survey is currently being planned for the tenement.
Loongana - Western Australia
The exploration licences cover what the Company believes to be the largest under-explored mafic/ultramafic intrusion in Australia, which has been interpreted from geophysical surveys and the geology confirmed by five reconnaissance drill holes.
The principal exploration model at Loongana is for intrusive style nickel sulphide mineralisation associated with ultramafic-mafic rocks. The target rocks are defined by an elongated, northeast trending intense gravity and magnetic anomaly that lie beneath 250-350 metres of Tertiary limestone and Mesozoic sediments of the Eucla Basin. The anomaly comprises a broad head (15km wide and 40km long) to the south west, with a thin tail extending at least 60km to the northeast.
Richmond initially planned to drill test five coincident, magnetic and gravity anomalies for nickel sulphides. Each anomaly was to be drilled with a vertical reverse circulation (RC) hole to an estimated 300-450 metres depth and test a potential standalone company making target.
Three vertical drill holes (LONRC 1, 2 & 5) have been completed in the programme before drilling was suspended.
The assay results support the current mineralogical study that has identified the majority of the rocks intersected in the drilling as being ultramafic. Although some variance in the nickel and copper values were seen within similar rock types, no results that could be described as anomalous were received.
However, assay results from the third hole LONRC 5 confirm it intersected gold mineralisation with associated elevated copper values. The best intercept is 1m @ 2.67 g/t Au from 368m in a quartz– feldspar vein. Further quartz veining between 370 – 372m contained on average 0.13% Cu and the interval from 371 – 372m also contained 0.74 g/t Au.
The intersection of gold mineralisation and anomalous copper opens up the potential for IOCG-style mineralisation at Loongana.
The primary objective for the Company is still to test the potential of the Loongana ultramafic – mafic intrusion to host nickel sulphide mineralisation. Richmond remains confident about the potential given the three holes completed to date confirm the intrusion is both mafic and ultramafic in composition and it is sulphide rich, historical drilling has confirmed that nickel sulphides are present in the ultramafic rocks, and only three targets have been tested within the +600km2 intrusion.
Richmond intends to resume the drilling programme at Loongana in October and test an additional three priority targets. Numerous stand alone targets remain untested and all present high exploration potential.
Virgin exploration targets such as at Loongana are rare within Australia and Richmond believes the complex holds exciting potential for a major precious metal or metallic deposit.