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May 2005 - Minotaur Exploration

Minotaur Exploration Limited (MEP) –Finding the Next Prominent Hill

  • Having sold Prominent Hill and its tenements for 1.85 Oxiana Resources (OXR) shares per 1 Minotaur Resources (MNR) share, the discovery team (who now operate Minotaur Exploration (MEP)) are searching for the next Prominent Hill.
  • The search is based on some of the key elements that are particular to Prominent Hill, namely location near the Hiltaba or Lower Gawler suite of rocks, structure (ideally NE or NW), and gravity/IP anomalism.
  • MEP have at least 14 joint ventures plus its own wholly owned projects, covering more than 50 tenements in various stages of exploration from access approval through to drilling and evaluation. The majority of the projects being in South Australia (the main location for the Hiltaba suite), and targeted areas such as in the vicinity of Broken Hill on the border with NSW and Mt Isa in Queensland.
  • In the March Quarter 2005, MEP formed a new joint venture with Helix (HLX) farming-in to earn a 51% interest in HLX’s Tunkillia project, which can be increased by 24.5% to 75.5% through including OXR to complete a prefeas study with an indicated resource exceeding 1moz. Tunkillia already has a resource of 730,000oz (10.5mt at 2.2g/t), and a recently completed IP survey that (after MEP interpretation) has identified a number of drill-ready gold targets.
  • MEP are able to spend A$4m to A$5m on exploration during the coming year to December 2005, and yet only ~A$1.5m is from their own funds (out of A$11.5m cash), because of the joint ventures MEP has with major companies such as BHP Billiton, the generative strategic alliance that it is forming with Oxiana to find world class copper-gold orebodies in Australia, and to some degree the SA Mines Department’s PACE initiative funding 50% of selected drillhole programmes.
  • Written by: Keith Goode
  • Tuesday, 10 May 2005