The exploration activities at the project are fully funded by a joint venture agreement between the company and a Korean consortium, comprising of the Korean Government (KORES), Daewoo International Corporation and LG International Corporation. The Korean participants can earn up to an aggregate 50% interest in the Marree Project by funding AUD6.2 million of exploration activities over three years, commencing 2009.
The project area includes the Tertiary Eyre and Namba Formations, host to several sedimentary roll-front uranium occurrences including the Beverley and Honeymoon Well uranium deposits, and the recently discovered high grade uranium mineralisation at Beverley Four Mile. Interpretation of drainage patterns and data from the company’s recently completed airborne radiometric/magnetic survey indicates uranium is being actively shed into the Marree project area from the adjacent uranium-rich Mount Babbage Inlier.
This drilling is the first programme in a new phase of exploration which will target uranium mineralisation in the Eyre and Namba Formation sands, adjacent to a basement fault structure associated with basement sourcing artesian springs. It is thought these structures may provide an additional pathway for uranium enriched fluids to enter the basin and interact with the target sand units.
The mud rotary drilling programme will comprise 35-40 holes for about 4,000m in the southeastern part of the project. The broadly spaced drilling on 1000 x 2000m and 400 x 800m spacings will test and infill approximately a 16km strike length of an interpreted palaeochannel system, where drilling, previously completed by the company, intersected anomalous uranium, including 1.75m at 51 ppm U3O8 within a weakly oxidised package of mudstone interbedded with gravels and sands below a lignitic horizon. Significant thicknesses of anomalous uranium up to 10x background were intersected over four kilometres of strike within variably reduced and oxidised lignitic mudstone associated with coarse sands.
