PERTH: Middle Island Resources Limited has applied for 10 exploration licences, covering an aggregate area of 3,912 square kilometres, within the East Tennant region of the Northern Territory (NT).
The applications semi-continuously extend for over 350km along the axis of the East Tennant Ridge from Tennant Creek, east across the Barkly Tableland, towards the Queensland border.
Six of these applications, covering some 1,890 square kilometres, have been accepted. An additional four applications, representing a further 2,022 square kilometres, were lodged by Middle Island as part of a competitive process following the lifting of a moratorium over the East Tennant (Barkly) area.
They are currently the subject of partially or wholly competing applications made by several companies, including Newcrest Mining, the outcome of which will be judged on the technical merit of proposed exploration programs in each case.
The 10 tenement applications represent Middle Island’s maiden entry into one of the NT’s historically strongly mineralised copper-gold provinces.
This strategy positions the Company as a first-mover within the newly identified, iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG)-prospective, East Tennant area (Figure 1), which extends across the Barkly Tableland. The tenement applications will collectively comprise the ‘Barkly super-project’.
Middle Island Managing Director, Mr Rick Yeates said: “The then pending, and now completed, divestment of the Reo gold project in Burkina Faso provided the opportunity for Middle Island to identify a new project, with the focus very much on a lower risk, Australian gold or copper-gold opportunity.
“On the basis of extensive internal and pre-competitive government research, and recognising increasing corporate interest in junior explorers with large, prospective landholdings, we are extremely pleased to be able to present the Barkly IOCG copper-gold super-project, which we firmly believe represents a significant, accessible, highly prospective, low entry cost, greenfields exploration opportunity to complement the more advanced and wholly owned Sandstone pre-development gold project in central WA.”