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Encounter Resources Ltd (ASX: ENR) shares are catching the eye of investors on Monday.
At one stage, the ASX mining share was up as much as 26% to a new high of 92 cents.
The niobium explorer’s shares have eased back a touch since then but remain up 16% to 85 cents at the time of writing.
Why is this ASX mining share surging?
The catalyst for today’s gain has been the release of drilling results from the Aileron project in Western Australia.
According to the release, aircore drilling has intersected further shallow, high-grade mineralisation at the West Arunta-based project.
At the Crean target, continuous near-surface carbonatite was intersected across the four aircore drill lines completed to the west of previous drilling. Previously reported assay results from the most western aircore drill line returned shallow high-grade niobium mineralisation.
Management notes that mineralisation at Crean is strongest on the two western sections. Pleasingly, it remains open to the west. As a result, the aircore drill rig has now returned to Crean to complete 200m spaced drill lines to extend this high-grade, near surface mineralisation further to the west.
Over at the Emily target, as a reminder, fifteen widely spaced reverse circulation holes were completed by the ASX mining share late last year. Emily is centred on a magnetic low on the Endurance Fault, which is northwest of the world class Luni discovery owned by WA1 Resources Ltd (ASX: WA1).
Management advised that 10 of the 15 reconnaissance holes intersected carbonatite. The carbonatite at Emily is variably anomalous in niobium and rare earth elements (REE) with shallow, high-grade niobium-REE intersected in two adjacent holes 400m apart.
Its latest aircore drilling tested the north-south extent mineralisation intersected previously. The good news is the first assays received from Emily returned shallow, high-grade niobium-REE mineralisation north and south of there. Additional aircore drilling at Emily will be completed in July/August to establish strike extent of the high-grade mineralisation identified.
The ASX mining share’s executive chairman, Will Robinson, commented:
Aircore drilling is defining new belts of shallow niobium-REE carbonatite hosted mineralisation in the West Arunta. Highly enriched, near surface mineralisation has now been intersected at both the Crean and Emily targets which are located on separate structures at Aileron, over 10km apart. The aircore rig is currently completing further drill sections at the western end of Crean and will then return to Emily and Green.