Norfolk is seeking to raise A$5-5.5 million at 20c to secure the Roger River gold and Orroroo uranium projects, two early-stage exploration opportunities it aims to work up.

 

The Tasmanian option considered the main focus of expenditure.

 

The explorer plans to complete up to 3000m of diamond drilling at Roger River with the aim of identifying epithermal gold occurrences in targets defined from ground based gravity and airborne aeromagnetic survey, while at Orroroo it plans RC drilling to better understand anomalies defined from prior coal drilling in the Walloway Basin.

 

Roger River is about 410km north-west of Hobart, and is known to have intense silicification, argillisation and diatreme breccias in close proximity to the 50km-long Roger River Fault and carbonate-rich host rocks, but only has minor copper and gold flagged by the Tasmanian Geological Survey.

 

The area is only known for minor quarrying for aggregate, and exploration has been both limited and sporadic. 

 

The only drilling of note, completed in the early 2010s, involved three diamond holes for 600m to assess IP chargeability anomalies and clarify the geology, finding anomalous gold, arsenic and zinc values in silicified rocks

 

There are a number of low-level soil anomalies for testing, and the hope is the project contains epithermal gold and silver mineralisation with little surface expression, such as Jerrit Canyon in the US and the Siana mine in the Philippines, with the latter most recently owned by Red 5.

 

The Orroroo project covers some 280sq.km about 275sq.km northwest of Adelaide. The 50km-long basin was last explored by failed underground coal gasification concern Linc Energy in 2010, and most prior work been unsuccessful assessments of the fossil fuel potential.

 

While the basin has no commercial coal-lignite or hydrocarbon potential, and there is no known outcrop that suggests a basement source for uranium, Linc's wireline logs indicated the potential for uranium in the underlying granitic basement rocks.

 

Norfolk intends to twin or re-enter the existing Linc holes as an initial proof of concept for uranium, as the gamma ray response could be explained by other reasons than roll-front style deposits.

 

Norfolk is led by Range River vendor and capital markets figure Ben Phillips as executive chair, geoscientist and financial planner Leo Pliapil as technical director, and accountant Patrick Holywell.

 

Norfolk aims to list in mid-March.