Our most successful “prospector”, Mark Creasy, has just notched up 50 years in the game and he is in a reflective mood.
“I’ve got a half a century up and I was just wondering when will I start producing daisies,” Creasy said.
But when asked about strong industry speculation that he has notched up yet another discovery, Creasy was tight-lipped.
The talk is that he has made a nickel-copper discovery about 25km north-east of the Nova nickel-copper-cobalt mine in WA’s Fraser Range, now owned by Independence Group (IGO) following its $1 billion takeover of Sirius Resources in 2015.
Nova was found in 2012 on ground Creasy first started picking up back in 1979 when drawn to the region in a hunt for space junk from the crash to earth of the US space station Skylab.
Creasy is now IGO’s biggest shareholder with 16% as a result of the Sirius takeover.
So there should be no surprise in the hot gossip that IGO is in talks with him to acquire his new discovery given the value to be had in a development of the rumoured find being able to leverage off Nova’s infrastructure base.
Now it has to be said that Creasy would not confirm he has made a discovery, said by the rumour mill to be shaping up as something about one-third the size of Nova.
“I can’t tell you anything about it at the moment. What can I say? We are reviewing some of our exploration data and it’s under review. I’ve been exploring in that area for many years,” was all he would say.
But public domain satellite imagery does suggest Creasy is on to something. The image shows a 200m by 250m area which looks as if it has been the subject of carpet bomb drilling on 25m-spaced drill lines.
Earlier images suggested an early-stage exploration project was underway. But the latest image suggests an ore delineation program could be underway ie a discovery has been made.
IGO would not buy into the speculation on either the existence of the discovery on its doorstep, or that it was in talks with its biggest shareholder to acquire the property.
“We do not comment on market speculation,” was IGO’s response.
Plus, more exploration results fuel talk of Rio’s ‘big copper find in WA’. Read more +
