Final report GR351 to 20 June 2017 EL 29837, EL 29953, EL 30076, EL 30077, EL 30078, EL 30079, EL 30080, EL 30736, EL 30737, EL 30750, EL 30751, EL 30752, EL 30753, EL 30774, EL 30775, EL 30776, EL 30812, EL 30813, EL 30822, EL 30823 and EL 30836

Abstract

Ripple Resources is a fully owned subsidiary of Armour Energy Ltd. Armour has been exploring the gas and oil resources of the McArthur Basin, and has made a significant gas discovery in the Glyde sub basin. Ripple has selected Exploration Licences within areas inside the Armour Energy permits, and has been cooperating with Armour in order to evaluate these EL's for their base metal potential. This cooperation has involved modifications and extensions to the Armour program so that it has greater relevance for base metal exploration. Ripple and Armour are taking a basin - wide approach, using expensive large scale geophysical geochemical and geological studies in order to select the optimal targets for expensive deep drilling. Future work will become more separated. Base metal exploration within many of these Licences is challenging because of the rugged topography and cover geology. Breccia hosted and stratiform mineralisation trends into the area from outcropping areas, the most notable being the Bald Hills - HYC trend and Western Emu fault. The imputed depths of mineralisation are believed to range from about 200m - 1000m, much of which is below the limit of airborne EM penetration. Previous exploration by Amoco Minerals (and Petroleum) and by BHP RTZ and MIM relied on airborne EM as a target generating technique. Amoco found outcropping Barney Creek shales and breccias in what was named the Glyde sub basin. Subsequent drilling found little evidence of proximal hydrothermal sulphide deposition in the sub basin, although it did encounter gas flows. Very little is known about the Barney Creek formation away from the Amoco drillholes. During Year 1, a Falcon airborne gravity and magnetics survey was flown, imaged and interpreted. One gravity anomaly adjacent to the Emu fault was diamond drilled to 1275m in hole LP3. The hole was subsequently logged with downhole geophysics including IP. This hole was drilled into EPM 29837, but has strong implications for several of the EL's which are the subject of this report. This hole intersected 75m of semi massive pyrite infill and replacements hosted by the Cooley Breccia member of the Barney Creek formation. It demonstrates that a significant hydrothermal sulphide system has mineralised the Barney Creek Formation in the area. Ripple has lodged further EL applications to better protect the extended target. A weakly mineralised and hydrocarbon rich hydrothermal breccia trends into the southern project area, where it is in contact with the McDermott and Wollogorang formations. A CSIRO study of potential outside the Barney Creek formation has highlighted the prospectivity of the Wollogorang and McDermott formation. The project area contains extensive but covered areas of these formations to the south of the Glyde gasfield. A program of leakage geochemistry drilling and geophysics was proposed. Much of this was a joint petroleum and minerals exploration effort with Armour Energy. The 2016 program was deferred for a year because of the untimely death of Aubrey McLarendon, the ultimate source of Ripple funding. His estate has withdrawn from the program and other funding measures are now in place. This finance has been redirected mainly towards the development of gasfields in Queensland, as the Northern Territory has brought in a ban on exploration for unconventional resources. This means that it is now impossible to conduct a cooperative petroleum and minerals basin wide exploration program. The EL's were surrendered on 30th June 2017.