SensOre Ltd (ASX:S3N) has received Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) funding from the WA Government to support drilling on two new targets that have the potential to add value to the state by opening up new areas for exploration.
The company applied for EIS funding, which was announced on April 24, from the government for its early-stage, greenfield projects Moonera and Auralia in Western Australia’s Madura Province.
Two projects in sights
Total funding available through the successful applications is $350,000 ($150,000 for RC drilling at Auralia and $200,000 for diamond drilling on Moonera).
SensOre completed its first hole at Moonera in July 2022 with the help of the first round of EIS funding.
Moonera is a joint venture with private company Nullabor Resources Pty Ltd. Through its 100% subsidiary SensOre Yilgarn Ventures Pty Ltd, the company can earn up to an 80% interest in the prospect by spending $3 million within three years.
As for Auralia, SensOre has an agreement with Chalice Mining Ltd (ASX:CHN, OTCQB:CGMLF) where it may earn up to 70% equity in the project by spending $5 million over two earn-in phases.
Machine learning potential
SensOre’s EIS applications focused on the potential of machine learning to improve greenfield discovery rate and it can now deploy its AI to target undercover hold potential at these early-stage targets.
The EIS funding – $10 million per year – is a WA initiative that encourages exploration in the state for the long-term sustainability of its resources sector, including in new mineral and energy discoveries and increased employment opportunities.
"We are grateful again to the government of Western Australia for its support for innovative new technologies and approaches. These are exciting projects,” SensOre CEO Richard Taylor said.
“The first drilling at Moonera last year geochemically confirmed the potential for the area to host a major copper-gold system and highlights the ability of SensOre’s machine learning and data-driven approach to rapidly identify and define exploration prospects. We look forward to working with our partners to realise this potential."
SensOre’s Base Metals Projects – Western Australia.
Newly emerging frontier
The Moonera prospect is a large, circular (7x5-kilometre) dense and magnetic geophysical feature located on a major structural dislocation visible in the Madura Province in Western Australia’s magnetic and gravity data.
Madura is east of the Fraser Ranger province in a newly emerging frontier exploration region that has complex basement geology beneath extensive cover rocks.
SensOre’s interpretation is that Moonera is a pipe-like, multiphase, altered intrusive with associated iron-rich magnetic alteration and metasomatism surrounding a central dense central body.
The target’s geophysical signature was interpreted as demonstrating characteristics of a carbonatite, IOCG or porphyry-type system which gives the target outsized potential if mineralised.
Completed drilling at Moonera encountered a granite and intermediate igneous complex in the basement from 458 metres depth.
Magnetite, hematite, albite, sericite, chlorite and epidote alteration combined with fertility indicators from whole-rock geochemistry are indicative of signatures commonly associated with magmatic hydrothermal IOCG’s (MH IOCG), alkaline porphyry and copper-gold breccia mineral systems.
All of these deposit styles have been associated with world-class deposits.
Moonera is one of the first of SensOre’s next-generation base-metals targets resulting from an expanded application of DPT on its proprietary hyperdimensional data cube combined with new geochemical and geophysical tools.
SensOre believes its technology has the potential to improve discovery rates for rare earth, battery and critical minerals.
About Auralia
The Auralia Project is a district-scale ~990 square kilometre landholding 500 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie. There has been limited historical exploration drilling below the Eucla Basin in this area, however, it has demonstrated ultramafic to mafic intrusive rocks associated with a large +80-kilometre strike length combined magnetic and gravity anomaly.
Previous owners described the project as: “[lying] within the Madura Crustal Element, which is a crustal block which lies immediately to the east of the Albany-Fraser Province. The area covered by the tenements is an elongated, northeast-trending intense gravity and magnetic anomaly located at depths of around 250 to 350 metres beneath the Tertiary and Mesozoic cover.
"This anomaly comprises a broad head (15 kilometres wide and 40 kilometres long) in the southwest portion, with a thin tail extending at least +60 kilometres to the northeast.
“[Historical data] indicates that the head of the anomaly is formed from a thick stack of slices of differentiated layered mafic-ultramafic rocks, intrusive granite and granite intruded by extensive fine-grained mafic dykes.”
Following AI targeting and acquisition, SensOre’s interpretation is the tail of the geophysical feature represents the lower 'feeder' portion of the intrusive complex and was identified by SensOre DPT® as a high-ranking, AI-generated target which has the potential to host nickel-copper mineralisation similar to the giant Voisey’s Bay Deposit in Canada.