Overview of Projects
Introduction
The Company's exploration tenements total some 10,000km² of tenements and tenement applications. The eight project areas generally comprise large contiguous holdings in highly mineralised provinces. The Rubicon portfolio combines exploration projects in the Western Australian Goldfields (Yindarlgooda, Desdemona, Erlistoun and Bencubbin), where known gold mineralisation is present, with higher risk and higher reward projects at Warburton, Canobie, Boddington South and the Iron Oxide Copper Gold targets.
Project Summaries
The Yindarlgooda Project comprises 1,470km² of granted tenements and applications centred 55 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie on a felsic volcanic centre around Lake Yindarlgooda. The project comprises both gold and Volcanic Massive Sulphide-style (VMS) base metals occurrences and has known gold mineralisation at Queen Lapage and Taurus as well as a significant strike extent of the Yindarlgooda VMS horizon considered prospective for economic copper and zinc mineralisation. As this project area has predominantly granted tenements it will be one of the main areas of initial focus and early drilling.
The Desdemona Project comprises 1,410km² of granted tenements and applications located to the southeast of Leonora. This includes leases adjacent to the historical gold mining centres of Cosmopolitan, Butterfly, Orient Well, Niagara and Yerilla and leases along the Keith Kilkenny Fault Zone. This area is also considered prospective for VMS-hosted base metals and in part contains similar rock sequences to those that host the Teutonic Bore and Jaguar VMS deposits to the northwest. VMS-related gossans and prospects occur in the northern Melita area of the project.
The Erlistoun Project of granted tenements and applications comprises non-nickel exploration and mining rights to Heron Resources tenements north of Laverton with significant gold mineralisation known to the north and south.
The Warburton Project comprises 2,900km² of exploration licence applications within the western Musgrave Province. The area has potential for Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) mineralisation (e.g. Olympic Dam, Ernest Henry and Prominent Hill) as demonstrated through previous exploration. Approximately 200 copper occurrences have been noted by previous explorers and limited diamond drilling has intersected pervasive red hematite alteration that is typical of the IOCG systems, associated with copper intercepts of up to 3.5m @ 8.22% copper. The easternmost Caesar Hill area lies to the north of the Babel and Nebo copper-nickel deposits and occurs within the same Giles Complex intrusive rocks.
The Bencubbin Project consists of wholly-owned granted exploration licences and applications and option tenements of 820km² located 70 kilometres north of Merredin and covering the entire Bencubbin greenstone belt. A strong gold-in-auger anomaly generated by a major company in the early 1990s returned up to 12m @ 2.2g/t gold in follow up drilling, with little further work since.
The Boddington South Project, located 200 kilometres southeast of Perth, consists of two exploration license applications covering the southern extension of prominent north northwest trending faults passing through the 25 million ounce Boddington gold camp. The licences also coincide with geochemical targets from CSIRO laterite sampling.
The Canobie Project in Queensland comprises five exploration permit applications totalling 1,620km² over magnetic, gravity and structural targets in the covered northeastern part of the Mt Isa Inlier.
The IOCG Targets comprise five separate project areas (three granted exploration licences and two applications) in the northern part of Western Australia. These project areas generally comprise untested magnetic IOCG targets under cover in the Proterozoic Basins of northern Western Australia. Four of the targets are located along the major G10 mineralised lineament.
The Company has 100% ownership and exploration rights to the majority of its tenements, but within the Yindarlgooda, Desdemona and Erlistoun projects, Heron Resources Limited either retains nickel exploration and mining rights on Rubicon tenements overlying ultramafic rocks or retains the tenement and Rubicon has all non-nickel exploration and mining rights. With the exception of four option tenements at Bencubbin, the tenements and commodity rights are wholly owned, which gives Rubicon significant future flexibility in funding exploration.
