exploration starts at maggie hays

miningnews.net


Brad Ricks


Tuesday, November 02, 2004
NICKEL Australia has commenced the first phase of an exploration program including 4000m of close-spaced aircore drilling and moving loop and fixed loop surface elctromagnetic surveys at the Maggie Hays South nickel sulphide prospect.

The company said in its September quarterly report, any targets generated by this program would be followed-up with diamond drilling and downhole electromagnetic surveys.

Maggie Hays South is situated in the central part of the Lake Johnston greenstone belt, 25km south of LionOre Australia's Maggie Hays and Emily Ann nickel operations in Western Australia.

The deposit has a current strike length of 4km and Nickel Australia believes it could be the southern extensions of the rock units hosting LionOre's deposits.

There has been little previous exploration at Maggie Hays South with a historical wide-spaced RAB drilling program returning anomalous nickel and copper geochemistry along the ultramafic footwall contact.

Surface electromagnetic work identified four conductor anomalies, also located near the basal ultramafic contact, however none of these targets have been tested by deep drilling.

Nickel Australia managing director Tony Rovira said the new electromagnetic surveys and the aircore program would further define these targets, which will also be tested with diamond drilling early in 2005.

"The original electromagnetic surveys were carried out back in 1996 but now we have reinterpreted these targets," he said.

"The electromagnetic work will take a week and then it should take us about four weeks to complete the aircore drilling."

Maggie Hays South is a joint venture project between Nickel Australia and Hannans Reward.

Nickel Australia has the right to earn a 55% interest in any nickel discoveries at Maggie Hays South by sole funding exploration and completing a Bankable Feasibility Study within the next five years.

Following completion of the study and upon a decision to mine, Hannans Reward will retain a 35% interest in the nickel minerals and may elect to either contribute or revert to a 2% Net Smelter Royalty.

The remaining 10% interest in the Maggie Hays South Project is held by two private entities

Shares in Nickel Australia were trading unchanged at 16c on the ASX this morning.