Deep dive begins at Iltani’s Orient project
By Industry Queensland
Iltani Resources has started drilling a diamond hole about 750m deep at its Orient silver-lead-zinc-indium project in Far North Queensland.
The Orient deep diamond hole marks an exciting step for Iltani, according to managing director Donald Garner.
“The diamond drill hole will be the deepest hole ever drilled at Orient and will seek to confirm the potential for a porphyry system at depth,” he said.
“When the hole is completed, we will undertake a DHEM (downhole electromagnetic) survey and this will enable Iltani to better understand the architecture of the Orient system, in particular the source of mineralising fluids and potential larger accumulations of mineralisation (copper and/or tin) associated with the porphyry at depth.
“We expect the hole to take around 25 days to reach target depth and we cannot wait to see what is down there.”
The drilling and DHEM survey are supported by a $299,000 grant awarded to Iltani through Round 8 of the Queensland Government’s Collaborative Exploration Initiative.
In line with the CEI operating to support ‘proof of concept’ exploration activities, the drill hole is designed to test the following concepts:
- Confirm the presence of vertical zonation in the vein system (mineralisation and alteration);
- Target the geophysical anomaly (large low resistivity, variable chargeable, magnetic body at depth that underpins (potentially sources) the shallower epithermal mineralisation at Orient); and
- Seek to determine the presence of a porphyry/igneous intrusion at depth and gain a better understanding of the likely fluid source for the epithermal silver-lead-zinc-indium mineralisation.
Iltani’s Orient project is located about 20km west of Herberton and 9km north of Irvinebank in North Queensland.
It has produced assays as high as 1070g/t indium- believed to be the highest ever reported grades in drilling in Australia.
Geoscience Australia has designated indium as a critical mineral and it also has this classification in the United States, Japan, South Korea, India and the United Kingdom.
