New signs of promise on Niue

A SYDNEY exploration com pany is now raising money to undertake a search for uranium on Niue, where ex tremely high gamma radiation levels have raised hopes of a significant discovery. Roycol Ltd had put together a $2 million share and options issue.

The company’s chief executive, Eric Alexander, said uranium was the pri mary target but there were also hopes of finding polymetallic deposits because soil cover on the 260 sq km island contained trace amounts of mercury, gold, silver, bismuth and chromium.

Roycol has gained exploration rights over the entire island through a deal with Avian Mining Pty Ltd. Avian set out in 1969 to explore the south and central Pacific region, principally for phosphate.

But because background radioactivity levels in Niue were up to 60 times higher than generally found in Australia, Avian’s managing director, John Barrie, thought this might be due to late stage volcanic activity in the underlying seamount.

“This concept has made Niue island a prime exploration target for uranium, precious metals and associated base metals,” according to a summary of the Niue minerals project.

“Soil analysis have produced a massive mercury anomaly indicative of hydro thermal activity and epithermal mineral isation.”

An independent geologist’s report de scribed the Niue venture as unusual because the island “is not in one of the two major geological environments continental plates and subduction zones where we are accustomed to exploring for and finding deposits of minerals other than in sular phosphate rock and baux ite.”

While lack of knowledge about miner alisation in oceanic plates creates uncer tainty about the likely financial risks involved, it is possible that opportunities “to explore for polymetallic deposits in oceanic plates are waiting to be taken and the more obviously attractive targets such as Niue are relatively unexplored”.

A previous drilling programme be tween 1975 and 1980 utilised a small rig that was unable to penetrate a 300 metre thick layer of limestone in order to reach the exploration target.

The new programme will involve the drilling of eight holes to a depth of about 600 metres to test targets near the contact between the atoll complex and the underlying seamount complex.

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Barne a respected exploration geol ogist who remains a consultant to Roycol, believes any discovery on Niue will be of a substantial size because the volcanic barrier to the underlying yol canic activity provided good conditions for enrichment of gold, silver and other meta^s *

Geological work over the years has pinpointed the site of a caldera and Barrie has drawn parallels with gold discoveries at the Emperor Mine in Fiji and the Lihir gold deposit in Papua New Guinea.

An ore body similar to one at the emperor mine, he says, “would be located at or near the rim of either of the three volcanic features where they are cut by major structural features rep resented by air-photo lineaments.” □