One big step for the ‘next Olympic Dam’ as Argonaut readies for...

One big step for the ‘next Olympic Dam’ as Argonaut readies for exploration


Cameron England, Business Editor, The Advertiser
October 21, 2017 12:30am
Subscriber only


IT’S a project which Argonaut Resources has patiently been sitting on for 20 years, but now the Adelaide company is poised to pull the trigger on a big bang exploration program at a target which it says could rival Olympic Dam.

Exploration director Lindsay Owler says the company’s Torrens project in the far-north of South Australia has 10 exploration targets each with the potential to host an Olympic Dam-sized deposit.

Argonaut intends to start a major drilling program next year, following final government sign off.

Mr Owler says the project, given existing exploration results and the proximity of mines such as Carrapateena — just tens of kilometres from the southern extent of Argonaut’s tenement — and the Olympic Dam mega-mine to the northwest, is generating plenty of investor interest.

Mr Owler sees the Torrens project as potentially filling in part of the missing piece in South Australia’s geological map.

It’s accepted wisdom that mineral deposits tend to exist in a continuum — where one large deposit exists, there should be more.

But the size of the Olympic Dam ore body dwarfs by a phenomenal margin the size of other copper and gold mines such as Prominent Hill and the Carrapateena mine now being built.

The theory is that there must be some other elephants out there — but that South Australia’s deep layer of rock which overlays deposits such as Carrapateena, has hidden them from us until now.

“We’ve got to drill between 100m and 400m to get to the good rocks which is an impediment to exploration in South Australia, but it means there’s been a preservation because ... we have to dig down to get to it,’’ Mr Owler says.


EXPLORATION: Argonaut Resources’ Lindsay Owler.
“We’ve got all the right indications there, both from the remotely-sensed geophysics and the few drillholes that have been drilled into it so far, to know that we’ve got one of these big systems.’’

Argonaut last drilled the project in 2007-08, however the drilling was shut down at that point due to an Aboriginal heritage dispute which was recently resolved.

Mr Owler said the company was determined to go big with its exploration program, referencing the Olympic Dam drilling program in the 1970s which didn’t have significant success until the 10th drill hole and hit the payload on the 16th hole.

“What we want to do is not only to discover a huge deposit for ourselves but also to fill in the blank in (Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis’s) vision for copper production in SA.’’

That vision is to triple SA’s annual copper production to one-million tonnes within the next two decades.

Mr Owler says this vision needs another large discovery to turn the eyes of the investing world to SA.


EXPLORATION: The Torrens project (EL5614) has been approved for mining exploration.
“What South Australia needs is another Carrapateena or another Prominent Hill to really pull the ripcord and get investment on the ground,” he says.



“In the event of a discovery we’re going to see the South Australian map filled in.’’

Once final approvals are granted, Mr Owler says the company is ready to drill.

“We have a queue of people who will provide all of the funds for drilling,’’ he says.

“We’re very confident of our ability to fund a very aggressive drilling program. We’re not heading out there to drill two, three, four or five holes. In the spirit of the Roxby Downs drilling in ‘77, we have to be armed with enough funds for a single drilling campaign that gets us the discovery.

“Because if we drill five or six holes that don’t come in or are mere technical successes, the market’s going to assume it’s been a failure and we’re going to have to wait two years or something for a fresh set of eyes to fund it.

“We know what we need to do. We need to buckle down for a program of about 18 months, with two drill rigs drilling into this and it’s going to be the sort of adventurous and exciting drilling that we saw out of Western Mining in ’76-’77.

“They had to make their own drill rigs to drill through all this cover. And they did that. And we’re heading down a similar route.’’

Mr Owler said there was a lot of work being done to ensure the environment was protected, as the drilling would be done on the surface of Lake Torrens.

That involved using helicopters extensively to ferry equipment out to custom-made pontoons which will spread the weight of the drilling rig across the surface of the salt lake.

And they are not shying away from the depths needed, planning to drill to 1200m.

“We will drill every hole through the geophysical targets,’’ Mr Owler says.

The Torrens project is a joint venture between Argonaut and Aeris Resources (formerly Straits Resources) with the latter holding 70 per cent and Argonaut 30 per cent