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Vulcan is situated in elephant country Greg Solomon

– a revolutionary high performance con- and as it did when Rio Tinto also drilled,” beyond the pockets of a junior, with
crete admixture and OptiBlend®, an in- Solomon said. “The expectation of what Solomon saying the $400,000-500,000
novative retrofit dual fuel kit for diesel you needed to make a project back in Rio budget per straight hole drilled was not
generator sets – which has garnered a Tinto’s days; I think that is rapidly chang- sustainable for Tasman.
stronger following in the market. ing. “There are a lot of big targets there and
However, should drilling at Lake Tor- “I think the Resolution mine in Arizona the gravity image [pictured] we put out
rens by Fortescue deliver what the JV that BHP and Rio Tinto are trying to open you can see a lot of the texture in that.
partners wish for, the dial for investment up – starting at more than 1,300m deep They have done a lot of infill gravity in
in Tasman could be reversed back to- and only averages 1.4% copper – cer- that 100m spacings and in other places it
wards a metals focus. tainly is a far cry from what used to be re- is 200m where there is significant gravity
Results from drill holes VUD0018 and garded as the sort of grades you needed anomalies, which is in fact what drove the
VUD0019 on the Vulcan prospect are to make a deep mine work and that has locations of VUD0018 and VUD0019,”
highly anticipated, with preliminary in- all to do with automated mining.” Solomon said.
formation revealing that both holes in- VUD0018 was drilled to a depth of “If you have a look at VUD007 and
tersected substantial downhole widths of 1,675.2m to test the northern lode of VUD0014 on the eastern limb, while
hematite breccia, often a tell-tale sign of the Vulcan North gravity anomaly, while there is some very interesting stuff in the
potential significant IOCG mineralisation. VUD0019 focused on the southern lode southern portion. We originally had some
Confirmation of the holes’ make-up to a depth of 1867.2m. troubles getting access to that area, but
is being stalled by a slow turnaround of Vertical RC drilling was the first port of they may be able to get access or use
assays in laboratories, as a result of the call to start both holes before diamond navigational drilling to see the minerali-
weight of exploration in Australia cur- drilling took place and followed by navi- sation underneath.
rently. gational drilling “near the base of the “They may be thinking of going down
“The ore looks interesting, as it did cover sequence to flatten the hole”. the same vertical hole and then actually
when we started drilling in the beginning Such deep and complex drilling goes diverging off that in different directions
from that same vertical hole, a bit like
they do with shale gas where they have
these holes radiating out from a central
drill hole. I think that may be a direction to
look at and that may save some money.”
– Mark Andrews

NQ core at VUD0018 - colloform massive hematite breccia at about 1,387m

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT aPRIL 2021 Page 27