Lefroy pounces on new WA mineral frontier

ASX-listed Lefroy Exploration has laid claim to unearthing an emerging nickel-copper and platinum group element, or “PGE” province 210 kilometres northeast of Wiluna. The company has pegged five contiguous exploration licences, named Glenayle, covering a whopping 2735 square kilometres in a new mineral frontier targeting a large igneous province within the Proterozoic Salvation Basin sedimentary sequence in Western Australia.

The global push towards renewable energies and electric vehicles, with its associated surge in base metal prices, may well be a force driving the exploration sector to venture into new unexplored geological frontiers.

Under the guidance of Lefroy Managing Director, Wade Johnson, Lefroy has been developing a few of its own wild conceptual ideas in the quest to identify new areas in Western Australia prospective for nickel-copper mineralisation. In its assessment, the company identified the thick sedimentary sequence of the Salvation Basin is intruded by a series of mafic-rich dolerite and gabbro sills belonging to the Warakurna Large Igneous Province, or “LIP”, which extends roughly on an east-west trend from the Bangemall Basin in the west to include the Giles layered intrusive complex in the east for a length of approximately 1500 km.

The Giles layered intrusive complex hosts Oz Mineral’s Babel-Nebo nickel-copper-PGE deposits which boast a JORC mineral reserve of 720,000 tonnes of contained nickel and 790,000 tonnes of contained copper.

According to the company, a LIP is an extremely large accumulation of predominantly iron and magnesium rich igneous rocks, including mafic sills and dykes, arising when magma travels through the crust to the surface of the earth. These provinces consist of flood basalts and a plumbing system of regional dyke swarms, sill complexes, layered mafic-ultramafic intrusions and crustal magmatic underplates.

Lefroy said LIP’s are known to host world class nickel-copper-PGE deposits such as Norilsk-Talnakh in Siberia and the Duluth Complex in North America.

We are excited by this massive land acquisition which we consider prospective for magmatic nickel sulphide mineralisation. It is not often that an opportunity to stake such a large land holding and take a first mover approach over a prospective sequence of rocks in WA presents itself. The area has had limited previous exploration and we are very keen to expand and apply key learnings about Ni mineralisation in large igneous provinces that will provide exploration concepts for target selection. Glenayle adds another wholly owned project to the LEX greenfields exploration portfolio and complements our other Ni assets at Lake Johnston and Carnilya South.

Lefroy’s Glenayle nickel project is held by a new, wholly owned Lefroy Exploration subsidiary called Johnston Lakes Nickel. In a move to create a dedicated WA nickel exploration company, Lefroy reported it is currently transferring its other nickel assets at Lake Johnston and at Carnilya South into the new entity with the intention of listing Johnston Lakes Nickel on the ASX in 2022.

Whilst Johnston Lakes Nickel will be focused on a swag of new nickel exploration targets in WA, Lefroy has its sights set firmly on exploration at Eastern Lefroy and uncovering the potential of the Burns gold-copper-silver discovery that set the market alight earlier this year.

If this blue-sky approach all sounds vaguely familiar, market observers may be reminded of a little-known exploration company by the name of Chalice Mining. Chalice took a punt back in 2018 and pegged a patch of dirt, now infamously known as Julimar, some 70km north-east of Perth in an area that had seen very little exploration. Chalice interpreted the possible presence of a large mafic-ultramafic layered intrusive complex at Julimar based on high resolution regional magnetic considered highly prospective for nickel, copper and platinum group elements. However, the area had never been explored for these metals.

Chalice’s Julimar discovery started a modern-day mineral rush with a slew of companies scrambling to peg any patch of vacant land in the emerging South West Mineral Terrane.

This type of blue-sky greenfields exploration has become more accepted by market pundits of late and as Lefroy gears up to explore its own patch of dirt in an unexplored mineral province, punters will be keen to see if Lake Johnston Nickel can recreate the exploration-boom of the South West Mineral Terrane and discover another world-class nickel province.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au