Ventnor Resources' nickel strikes at Warrawanda support new drilling campaign in 2012

Ventnor Resources’ (ASX: VRX) drilling program at its Warrawanda nickel project has confirmed a massive ultramafic east-west intrusion more than 15 kilometres long, up to 400 metres wide and open at depth.

Ventnor has completed a 13 hole drilling program for 2,494 metres on targets generated by a previous helicopter mounted electromagnetic survey.

Elevated grades of up to 0.50% nickel, over 4 metres, with coincident iron and sulphur suggest a potential for Mt Keith style mineralisation.

Elevated nickel grades up to 0.58%, over 4 metres, with coincident iron and cobalt suggest a potential for magnetite hosted Indian style nickel cobalt mineralisation.

Managing director Bruce Maluish said the results validate Ventnor’s expectations and justifies further drilling to commence in 2012.

“This drilling has confirmed our geological model for the area and has demonstrated the potential for nickel sulphide as well as nickel magnetite accumulations.

“These results validate our expectations gathered from the history of the project and justify further drilling, which will be undertaken next year. Further examination of samples including mineralogy is underway with results due in four to six weeks.”

The Warrawanda nickel project is located 60 kilometres south of Newman, in the Sylvania Inlier, an Archaean granite-greenstone terrain in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

It is prospective for nickel-cobalt laterites, chrome and nickel sulphide mineralisation (Mt Keith style) and comprises an apparent 17 kilometres of lightly tested ultramafic rocks.

Compared to the larger and historically more productive Yilgarn and Pilbara Cratons, the Sylvania Inlier has been relatively under researched and under explored.

The major known economic ore occurrence is the Coobina chromite deposit, 55 kilometres to the north-east, where about 240,000 tonnes of chrome ore is produced annually from open pit mining.

The Warrawanda South Greenstone Belt, which hosts the Warrawanda Project, is a 30 kilometre long, 200 to 800 metre wide, easterly trending ultramafic body with in excess of 70 drill intersections greater than 0.2% nickel in laterite.

Further mineralogy work is required to define the nature of these potential mineralised zones.

Drilling continues at Thaduna and Green Dragon
Maluish said Ventnor’s primary focus is to continue its aggressive exploration program at the company’s flagship Thaduna and Green Dragon copper project for now and will remain so until the end of the year.

The Thaduna and Green Dragon Prospects are situated 40 kilometres east of Sandfire Resources' (ASX:SFR) 14.6 million tonne at 4.6% copper and 1.6 grams per tonne gold DeGrussa Project.

Originally published at: http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/21215/ventnor-resources-nickel-strikes-at-warrawanda-support-new-drilling-campaign-in-2012-21215.html