Koonenberry

S2 has three Exploration Licence applications covering 2,712 square kilometres in northwestern New South Wales (NSW) extending for a strike of 143 kilometres along the Koonenberry belt, which incorporates the Mt Arrowsmith volcanic sequence. The project is considered prospective for magmatic intrusive base and precious metal mineralisation.  The project area is located 130km northeast of Broken Hill astride the Silver City Highway, extending between the Packsaddle and Mt Arrowsmith regions.

The Koonenberry Belt sits along the north-eastern margin of the Curnamona Craton and comprises Late Neoproterozoic and Cambrian rocks containing early breakup gabbros and likely comagmatic orthocumulate ultramafic picrite sills and intrusions of the Mt Arrowsmith Volcanics. 

Overall, the project remains significantly under-explored. However, limited historical drilling within the application area by previous explorers, most notably Vale-Inco and subsequently Carpentaria Exploration, identified abundant orthopicrite cumulate sills containing interstitial red hornblende and confirmed the presence of magmatic nickel and copper sulphides (violarite and chalcopyrite). This red hornblende (kaersutite) is a key distinguishing mineralogical feature of the host intrusions in the Pechenga nickel camp in far northwest Russia, which contains multiple deposits with a combined metal content of ~4.7 million tonnes of nickel and 2.4 million tonnes of copper. The presence nickel and copper sulphides and the similarity to Pechanga geology in the Mt Arrowsmith area is very encouraging.

The scale and cratonic margin setting of this belt is analogous to the Fraser Zone of the Albany Fraser Orogen, which hosts the Nova-Bollinger nickel-copper-PGE deposit (discovered by the S2 team under Sirius Resources in 2012) and the Tropicana gold deposit, and the Circum-Superior belt of northern Canada, which hosts the giant Thompson and Raglan nickel districts.

S2 is currently undertaking the right to negotiate process under the Native Title Act ahead of the grant of an Exploration Licence. Planned activities for financial year 2022 includes data consolidation, establishing land access agreements, regional mapping and surface sampling as well as electromagnetic geophysical surveys.

S2 recognises that the area is home to a diverse community of stakeholders and hopes to work together with pastoral leaseholders, aboriginal representatives as well as the local residents and businesses along the Silver City Highway, including Packsaddle and Tibooburra settlements, in a collaborative and constructive manner to unlock the economic potential of the area whilst preserving its environmental values and quality of life for all. See also Community Relations.

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S2 Resources acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we work. We pay our respect to them, their culture and their Elders past, present and emerging.