Joint media release with the South Australian Minister for Energy and Mining, the Hon Dan van Holst Pellekaan
Exciting results will be released tomorrow from a joint Australian and South Australian Government project shedding light on the mineral potential of South Australia’s far west.
Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Matt Canavan and South Australian Minister for Energy and Mining Dan van Holst Pellekaan said today the project had indicated high potential for nickel, copper and platinum in the region.
The Ministers said further follow-up work was required but they described results so far as exciting.
The project has been conducted by the Geological Survey of South Australia and Geoscience Australia with the results to be revealed to the mining industry at a workshop in Adelaide tomorrow.
“The Coompana area in South Australia’s far west is regarded as one of Australia’s greatest geological and mineral exploration frontiers but hadn’t been explored for more than 30 years,” Minister Canavan said.
“The Coalition Government has part-funded this project from our $100 million Exploring for the Future program.
“This program is enhancing our understanding of the resource potential of our vast county and will be a key driver in the next generation of new resource discoveries.”
Minister van Holst Pellekaan said the program had been extremely successful, providing explorers with new mineral target areas, a key component of the South Australian Governments PACE Copper initiative.
“Our focus is to increase exploration investment in the region, generate more job opportunities and help unlock South Australia’s full economic potential,” Minister van Holst Pellekaan said.
“The project has applied cutting-edge technologies to analyse the new data and developed an exploration toolkit that will help reduce risk for industry when searching for mineral deposits deep underground.
“The Coompana Drilling Program collected more than 1,800 metres of core samples in eight drill holes using a variety of drilling methods.”
All data will be publicly available, along with other data collected through the Exploring for the Future program – at www.ga.gov.au/eftf
