Encounter reports thick niobium-bearing carbonatite hit at West Arunta

Encounter Resources (ASX:ENR) has reported striking a thick carbonatite target between two known target areas of interest.

Both known target areas – Crean and Hurley – have been recorded as boasting niobium mineralisation, the metal that made WA1 Resources a darling.

Worth noting is that those two targets are 3km apart, indicating a potential large area where Encounter’s drillers will be busy looking for niobium hits in a not-too-distant future.

At last two positive niobium hits were recorded in the latest drilling with an aircore rig; one core sample was the equivalent of 3m width and a second was 5m.

Neither is truly substantial enough to begin shoring up any kind of resource upgrade; these brief pockets of mineralisation were detected from 81m to end of hole and 102m to end of hole, indicating a system that starts around 80-100m – as far as those two drillholes go.

One diamond drill that sunk deeper below that cutoff pulled back core now with assay labs and set for report next month.

“The extremely thick carbonatite that has been drilled at this location supports an interpretation that the Elephant Island Fault corridor is a significant regional scale control for the emplacement of mineralised carbonatites in the West Arunta,” Encounter EC Will Robinson said.

“This has important implications for future exploration along this corridor and other structural corridors across the project area.”

ENR last traded at 53cps.