Celia Project
The Celia Project comprises approximately 1,300 km² of tenure over the southern part of the Laverton Tectonic Zone, one of Australia's most productive gold provinces. Mainly acquired through open ground acquisition during 2009, Rubicon has secured tenure adjacent to and along strike of the Sunrise Dam, Granny Smith, Safari Bore, Butcher Well and Kangaroo Bore gold deposits. The leases also encompass parts of the ultramafic belt that hosts the Eucalyptus Bore nickel laterite mineralisation. Rubicon has focused its non-joint venture exploration, including substantial drilling, through 2010 at Celia.
Gold Exploration
Exploration work on the Celia project has comprised interpretation of detailed multiclient and open file aeromagnetic and gravity data, a detailed review of previous exploration and consolidation of all drilling and surface sampling data into a database, field review, rock chip sampling, soil sampling and approximately 27,000m of aircore and RAB drilling which has defined significant gold trends.
At Safari North, drilling has defined gold anomalism over a 500m strike length around RCAC063 (10m @ 1.85g/t gold). The new drilling indicates that gold mineralisation in RCAC063 is hosted by a north trending structure and the gold anomaly is still open for 0.4km to the north and 1.1km to the south.
Drilling 4km further north of RCAC063 also intersected further anomalism (4m @ 0.44g/t gold) along the same mineralised trend.
At Butcher Well Southeast, new drilling has extended gold anomalism for a strike length of 4.4km on the northern continuation of the Safari North shear system. RCAC216 recorded an intercept of 4m @ 1.03g/t gold. There is little drill testing of this structure between Butcher Well Southeast and Safari North, a distance of approximately 7km. This structural trend is interpreted as the northern extension of the structure hosting the Safari Bore deposit (0.5m oz gold) south of Rubicon's tenure (Safari Shear system).
At Red October Extended, drilling defined a gold mineralised structure centred on an intercept of 7m @ 0.85g/t gold that extends for 900m, which occurs at the intersection of a granite-greenstone contact with the northeasterly-trending structural dislocation that controls the Red October deposit to the northeast.
Drilling along the Mt Hornet Shear System, which is host to the Butcher Well gold deposit (0.3m oz gold), returned 4m @ 0.22g/t gold in RCAC259 at Butcher Well South. Twenty kilometres to the north along the same structural system at Crimson Belle, RCAC0183 intersected 4m @ 1.57g/t gold.
Drilling at Gap Bore focussed on testing mainly BIF-hosted prospects, which were either conceptual targets or were identified in rock chip sampling. While drilling on the BIFs did not produce many significant intercepts, a result of 4m @ 1.77g/t gold (Figure 3) is adjacent to a major structure and is open in most directions.
At Choir Boy, an intercept of 6m @ 1.69g/t gold (including 4m @ 2.47g/t gold) is located directly along strike from known gold mineralisation at the Choir Boy Prospect.
A full review of the targets tested to date will now be made and follow up programs planned. In addition, new targets on existing and newly acquired tenure at Celia are being reviewed and prioritised.
Iron Exploration
Rubicon collected 250 rock chips samples in mid 2010 from nominally 800m spaced traverses over BIF ridges located in the western part of Celia Project area extending over a strike extent of some 60km. The BIF package is up to 1.2km wide and composed of multiple outcropping BIF horizons separated by beds of metasediment and intermediate volcanic.
Contiguous samples across individual BIF outcrops have been compiled into 152 composites ranging in sampled widths of between 0.5 and 26.0 metres. The samples averaged 31.2% Fe, 51.3% SiO2, 0.1% P2O5, and 0.5% Al2O3 (using a 25% Fe lower cut) compared to 29.4% Fe, 53.5% SiO2, 0.1% P2O5, and 0.5% Al2O3 for all samples. These are excellent grades and levels of impurities in comparison to other Western Australian magnetite deposits under consideration for development.
The sampling results were strongest in the Gap Bore area, where multiple parallel BIF beds were sampled over a strike length of 15km. The multiple BIF beds occupy two to three ridges which rise to over 30m above the surrounding plains. Some samples in the Gap Bore area returned anomalous gold assays (up to 1.72g/t Au) which correlate with areas of gold anomalism identified in previously reported rock chips.
