This is a section of an article I found that explains BHP's...

This is a section of an article I found that explains BHP's ability to locate Oak Dam West, after Western Mining missed it completely years prior.

BHP chief technology officer Diane Jurgens, in a presentation at the Bank of America Merryll Lynch (BAML) SmartMine conference in London, said the company’s approach to technology was a way for geologists to identify opportunities “that were hidden to explorers in decades past”

Jurgens said to extract resources efficiently and maximise value, geological information would be required in a form that enables “better, earlier and faster decision making”.

It was this new approach to interpreting exploration data that led, in November last year, to the Oak Dam copper discovery near our existing Olympic Dam operations in South Australia,” Jurgens said.BHP discovered the deposit around 65 kilometres from its existing Olympic Dam mine by re-analysing older drilling data with advanced geophysics modelling technology, a tactic the company has employed as part of a technology-led exploration push across the company’s assets in Australia and several international territories.

BHP used advanced scientific geographic techniques to locate ODW. Their bonanza hole was merely meters away from a western mining hole. I believe geophysic and rock geochemistry analysis are key to finding a viable IOCG deposit - these are the same techniques that lead BHP to ODW.

also, i agree that are our low-level mineralisation likely isn't from the periphery from ODW because hole 3 is closer and showed less mineralisation than hole 4 - hopefully we have our own independent IOCG system.