Dundas Minerals Ltd (ASX:DUN) is seeking to increase its Dundas tenement holdings by more than 50% through the submission of three additional exploration licences to the Western Australian Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety.
The licence applications cover a combined area of 644 square kilometres and are north and northeast of Dundas’ Central exploration target and contiguous to existing licences held by the company.
Exploration licence applications (yellow) relative to existing granted licences (orange).
Dundas said a majority of the areas that the company had applied for had pre-existing third-party exploration licence applications. However, it managed to reach agreements with the third-party applicants to withdraw their applications.
To acquire historical exploration data relating to the application areas from the parties, Dundas issued 40,000 fully paid ordinary shares of $0.50 each and paid $20,000 in cash to them.
Dundas plans to use SkyTEM electromagnetic surveying to locate conductive anomalies over the new tenure.
Rain and flooding
Separately, drilling of a third diamond hole at Central has been delayed because of extremely heavy unseasonal rainfall at the site.
Dundas said last week’s rainfall about of 75 millimetres cut road access to the site from Esperance and resulted in flooding of the camp and around the drilling sites.
Drilling activities were suspended for much of the week due to safety reasons and the inability to resupply diesel fuel and fresh water.
Both have been successfully completed over the weekend and drilling of hole three recommenced on November 6.
Subject to no further heavy rainfall, drilling is likely to be completed at the end of this week.
Dundas Minerals is actively exploring for nickel, copper and gold in the prospective Albany-Fraser Orogen of Western Australia.