Project Overview

Western Australia’s Proterozoic orogenic belts have habitually been over-looked as exploration targets in favour of greenstone belts within the Archaean cratons.

The Company believes that these orogenic belts are similar to other areas of the globe which host large nickel sulphide and gold-copper deposits, and that considerable potential exists for their discovery in the areas held by the Company.

Athena’s strategy is to target these under-explored late-Archaean and Proterozoic terrains on the margins of Western Australia’s Archaean cratons. Consequently the Company has been able to assemble or acquire the rights to a strategic portfolio of tenements over areas with known mineralisation or with untested geochemical and geophysical anomalies.

Nickel deposits are categorised into magmatic sulphide and lateritic types according to mineralogy and the method of formation. Sulphide nickel-copper(+/-PGE) deposits form by the direct segregation from molten magma, while lateritic deposits are formed by the breakdown of silicate minerals such as olivine, which contain the nickel, during near surface weathering. The Company’s principal target is nickel sulphide mineralisation in mafic rocks, but gold and basements are also potential targets.

Fertile mafic rocks hosting nickel-copper sulphides and platinum group elements occur on a global scale and are found along major crustal fractures associated with continental collisions on craton margins and within intra-cratonic rift zones. Large magmatic sulphide deposits such as Canada’s Voisey Bay, Jinchuan in China and Noril’sk-Talnakh in northern Russia are associated mafic and ultramafic magmatic events, and are spatially linked to the magma feeder zones near mantle-tapping crustal sutures.

Large magmatic complexes with significant potential to host such world class nickel-copper-PGE deposits occur in Australia. The principal geological criteria are the presence of mantle-tapping structures, a process for contaminating the magma thereby triggering the formation of sulphides, sufficiently large magma reservoirs from which sulphides can segregate, and trap sites to concentrate sulphides as they form.

Several areas with these features have been identified within the Ravensthorpe tenements. In particular:-

Proterozoic layered intrusions are known to occur in Albany–Fraser Orogen,
Proterozoic mafic dyke swarms formed from mantle derived magmas and as such are prospective for sulphide mineralisation in the right setting,
The dykes display pinch & swell form which can be important in concentrating sulphides in magmatic systems,
Sulphide bearing ultramafic dykes. Sulphides also occur in mafic outcrops at Norite Hill and North Point,

Strong chalcophile response (elevated copper, zinc, platinum, palladium and gold) indicative of sulphides in geochemistry from fresh and weathered rock.