 Projects Overview
Sovereign holds interests in 15 tenements forming four projects in the Cloncurry–Mount Isa area of Northwest Queensland. The projects are prospective for major deposits of both base and precious metal mineralisation. The projects are named by their geographic locations: Cloncurry North, Cloncurry Central, Cloncurry South, and Mount Isa Southeast. Their locations are shown on Figure 1.
Six of the tenements comprise the Carpentaria Joint Venture (CJV), an exploration joint venture between Mount Isa Mines Limited (Xstrata Copper) and Sovereign. Sovereign acquired its interest in the joint venture from Fusion Resources Limited ("Fusion") in 2006. Xstrata Copper is the manager of the joint venture and has earnt a 51% interest in the tenements through a farm-in agreement. Xstrata Copper and Sovereign are now contributing to ongoing exploration of the tenements on a 51:49 basis. Since the commencement of the joint venture in 2002, Xstrata Copper have drilled a total of 94 holes for 11,360m on CJV tenements.
A number of tenements in the CJV are located close to the Rocklands Project, from which significant intersections of copper mineralisation have recently been announced.
The remaining tenements will be explored by Sovereign and exploration activities will commence once tenements are granted.
In addition to Sovereign's interest in projects in the Cloncurry-Mount Isa area, the Directors have elected to proceed with an agreement to farmin to the Tate River Gold Project in Northern Queensland currently owned by Fusion.
The Tate River Gold Project consists of 3 contiguous tenements encompassing an area of 780km2 located approximately 200km west of Cairns in north Queensland.
The agreement with Fusion provides for Sovereign to earn a 50% interest by spending $1.45M over a two year period and up to an additional 25% interest by spending a further $1.5M. Fusion may elect to maintain its interest at each stage of the farmin once Sovereign has earned a 50% interest.
Figure 1: Project Location Map
Sovereign’s projects are distributed throughout the Mesoproterozoic Mount Isa and Georgetown Provinces, which contain the world-class metal deposits of Mount Isa (Cu and Pb-Zn-Ag) and Century (Zn-Pb-Ag), in addition to a number of other major deposits, including George Fisher and Hilton (Zn-Pb-Ag), Cannington (Pb-Zn-Ag), Dugald River (Zn-Pb-Ag), and Ernest Henry (Cu-Au).
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