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Principal Office:
Toro Energy Limited
3 Boskenna Avenue
NORWOOD
South Australia 5067
ABN 48 117 127 590
Telephone: (08) 8132 5600
Facsimile: (08) 8362 6655
Email: info@toroenergy.com.au
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Level 2, 35 Ventnor Avenue
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West Perth WA 6872
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Email: info@toroenergy.com.au
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The McArthur Uranium Project covers a broad geographical area but encompasses one common element, the Palaeo- to Meso-proterozoic McArthur Basin. This Basin and its basal unconformity are associated with all the major uranium deposits in the Northern Territory, including Ranger, Jabiluka, Koongarra, Nabarlek and Westmoreland. The tenements cover a variety of geological settings and uranium model types, including unconformity, structure-associated and phosphate hosted. One tenement also has significant ‘sedex’ base metal potential. |
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McArthur Project: Toro Energy100% covering EL27429 and ELAs 26861, 27588, 27954, 28053 and 28054 LOCATION AND ACCESS The McArthur Uranium Project covers a number of tenements throughout the highly-prospective McArthur Basin region, in the Top End of the Northern Territory (Figure 1). The tenements lie on both pastoral (Native Title affected) and Aboriginal freehold (ALRA affected) land and advancement will be subject to negotiations with Traditional Owners to put agreements in place. The tenements are all quite remote with access gained via various roads and tracks from Darwin.  Figure 1: Location of McArthur Project tenements. Granted tenements have no pattern fill, while applications are stippled. GEOLOGICAL SETTING This project covers a broad geographical area but encompasses one common element, the Palaeo- to Meso-proterozoic McArthur Basin (Figure 2). This Basin and its basal unconformity are associated with all the major uranium deposits in the Northern Territory, including Ranger, Jabiluka, Koongarra, Nabarlek and Westmoreland. Underlying this largely flat-lying intracratonic basin are Palaeoproterozoic metamorphic, volcanic and intrusive rocks broadly constrained to the 1950-1800ma period, including the Pine Creek Orogen. Local inliers of Archaean appear to be important in the Alligator Rivers region uranium deposits (Figure 2). The tenements of this project comprise various parts of the basin stratigraphy that are prospective for uranium via different models.  Figure 2: Geological setting of the McArthur Project. The orange-brown tone depicts Pine Creek Orogen and equivalent basement and the light brown tone indicates McArthur Basin. Archaean inliers are in bright pink. The Kukulak application in Arnhem Land has potential for unconformity style uranium deposits. It comprises Archaean and Palaeoproterozoic metasediments and granites that have a high background uranium content, overlain by the Mamadawerre Sandstone (basal McArthur Basin). World-class uranium deposits of the Alligator Rivers region lie within 100km of the tenement, including Ranger, Jabiluka and Nabarlek (Figure 2). There are also known uranium and gold occurrences on this tenement. The Coast Range application also lies within Arnhem Land and has potential for unconformity style uranium in 1950-1870ma metasedimentary rocks of the Grindall Metamorphics, below shallow (<200m) McArthur sedimentary cover. It lies at the sharp basin boundary fault of the Walker Trough, a palaeogeographical ‘graben’ feature that is highly prospective for sediment-hosted (‘sedex’) base metals deposits. The McArthur River (HYC) Zn-Pb-Zn deposit lies along the equivalent structure in the Batten Trough to the south (Figure 2). Toro’s granted tenement at Benmara lies within the Westmoreland uranium field, which contains a number of small to medium sized sandstone-hosted uranium deposits. The area has potential for Westmoreland-style deposits along structures and dykes within the Westmoreland Conglomerate and also uranium deposits in the underlying basement of Murphy Metamorphics. The unconformity is analogous with that in the Alligator Rivers region and is currently subject to investigation by Bondi Mining. The granted Karns tenement we believe has potential for phosphate style uranium, as previous exploration in the 1980s led to the discovery of a P-U-REE prospect immediately to the east at Selby (Figure 3). This prospect is a sheet like body or set of semi-continuous bodies of phosphatic sandstone 1-5 m thick and >3km in diameter at the basal unconformity of the Mesoproterozoic Karns Dolomite, which is flat lying to shallow dipping and is only sparsely covered. Low to moderate grade phosphate mineralisation (average 20% P2O5) with high background U (average 290 ppm) and REE (average 600 ppm) is exposed at the Selby prospect (NTGS explanatory notes), but this can be tentatively extrapolated on regional radiometrics over an area of approximately 200km2, providing potential for a high tonnage, low grade resource. In addition, the Karns tenement lies within a belt of Cu-Co-Ni breccia pipes that include Redbank, Stanton and Running Creek (Figure 3).  Figure 3: Karns tenement showing the potential distribution of phosphate mineralisation and the regional U2/Th radiometric signature. PREVIOUS EXPLORATION There has been almost no exploration over the areas encompassing the Coast Range, Boxer and Benmara tenements, owing to remote location and access restricted by land holders. There has been limited exploration by Uranerz and Cameco at the Kukulak tenement, comprising drilling of unconformity targets generated from airborne and ground geophysics, radon cup surveys and prospecting. The remoteness and difficult terrain have largely restricted follow-up exploration to helicopter supported drilling. At Selby, exploration has focussed on phosphate and manganese, but work has been notably constrained to a single site of approximately 2km2. The larger radiometric signature of the phosphate covers a considerably larger area that has not been explored at all. EXPLORATION OBJECTIVES After reviewing of the available data and reports, Toro composed the following objectives for this project: • Develop appropriate and testable deposit models for unconformity or structural-controlled uranium at the Kukulak, Benmara and Boxer tenements. • Identify basement conductors and alteration systems under cover using modern techniques like EM, soil gas and geochemistry. • Assess the ‘sedex’ model in respect of Coast Range, including the application of published ‘vectors to ore’. • Determine the likelihood of sufficient volumes and grade of phosphate to operate an economic mine at Selby, with uranium and other elements as by-product credits. This will also require advancement of the current treatment technologies of this ore type. EXPLORATION COMPLETED A desktop review of previous exploration has been carried out over the Karns tenement and the adjacent Selby deposit. However, no on-ground exploration has taken place as yet. Grant of the other tenements is contingent on negotiations with Aboriginal land-holders. Exploration on Kukulak is unlikely to commence before 2012. Coast Range is in moratorium until 2015. EXPLORATION IN 2011 At Karns, Toro intends flying detailed radiometrics and magnetics later in 2011. This will be followed up in 2012 by shallow RC/Aircore to assess the thickness of phosphate and grade of uranium and other elements. |
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