- Oar Resources (OAR) plans an extensive aircore drilling program at the Oakdale graphite project on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia
- The company made the decision to recommence exploration and other works to advance the project in the hope of updating and expanding the previous scoping study
- Oar Resources will adopt a staged approach for assessing the potential to produce purified spherical graphite
- Oar Resources last traded at 0.8 cents per share at 1:30 pm AEST
Oar Resources (OAR) has planned an extensive aircore drilling program at the Oakdale graphite project on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia.
Oakdale is a critical minerals project which has been subject to previous exploration by Oar, culminating in an initial combined indicated and inferred JORC resource of 13.47 million tonnes at 3.3 per cent total graphitic carbon, including 6.31 million tonnes at 4.7 total graphic carbon.
Following a review, the company put plans in place to recommence exploration and other works to advance the project. As such, 5000 metres of aircore drilling will be undertaken to expand and upgrade the existing JORC resource.
Oar said it will adopt a staged approach to assessing the potential to produce purified spherical graphite, which is critical for producing anode utilised in lithium-ion batteries.
Exploration Manager Ross Cameron said the detailed review of the project will aim to assess the project’s development options overall.
“This staged approach will ensure the company is well positioned to capitalise on the prevailing strength in the graphite market which has changed substantially for the better since the initial scoping study was undertaken in 2015, due to the demand for ethically sourced battery-grade graphite and the rapid uptake of electric vehicles,” Mr Cameron said.
Core from previous diamond drilling will be used in the latest batch of test work. This, according to Oar, will remove the need for new diamond drilling and reduce the time and cost to obtain new metallurgical samples for a planned updated scoping study.
Meanwhile, a new metallurgical test work program is due to be undertaken to assess whether Oakdale graphite will be amenable to producing a battery-grade spherical graphite for use in the production of lithium-ion batteries.
Oar Resources last traded at 0.8 cents per share at 1:30 pm AEST.