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Scorpion Minerals Limited (ASX: SCN) has delivered a significant milestone for its flagship Pharos Gold Project in the Murchison region of Western Australia, announcing a new Exploration Target for the Old Prospect Zone that points to meaningful scale and continuity of gold mineralisation. The Scorpion Minerals Old Prospect gold exploration target at Pharos Gold Project marks a clear step-change in how investors should be thinking about SCN's asset base.
The newly defined Exploration Target for Old Prospect stands at 1.0 – 3.0 million tonnes grading 1.5 – 2.0 g/t Au.
To put that in context, at the midpoint of both ranges — 2.0 million tonnes at 1.75 g/t Au — that implies a conceptual in-situ gold inventory well in excess of 100,000 ounces. While this is a conceptual target and not a Mineral Resource, it provides a powerful reference point for understanding the growth potential that lies ahead of the existing resource base.
The target covers oxide, transitional and sulphide mineralisation within a steep west-dipping, north-plunging zone with approximately 700 metres of strike extent at surface, modelled to a depth of 170 metres below surface (mbs).
CEO Michael Fotios commented: "Scorpion continues to demonstrate the scale and quality of its expansive asset portfolio in the Murchison region of Western Australia. Our initial Exploration Target for Old Prospect builds on an existing resource base that we will aim to further grow over the coming months."
The Scorpion Minerals Old Prospect gold exploration target at Pharos Gold Project is not built on wishful thinking. Furthermore, it sits on top of a JORC 2012-compliant Mineral Resource already defined at Old Prospect North and South combined:
| Category | Tonnes | Grade (g/t Au) | Contained Au (oz) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indicated | 229,308 | 2.12 | 15,599 |
| Inferred | 82,871 | 2.27 | 6,036 |
| Total | 312,395 | 2.15 | 21,632 |
A notable confidence point: 72% of the contained ounces — or 15,600 oz — sit in the higher-confidence Indicated Resource category. That is an unusually high proportion for a project at this stage of development and signals meaningful geological confidence in the mineralisation.
The Exploration Target builds beyond the existing resource boundary, both along strike to the north and south, and down dip and plunge at depth — all areas where drilling has either been absent or too widely spaced to define resources to date.
The Scorpion Minerals Old Prospect gold exploration target at Pharos Gold Project is underpinned by extensive historical and recent drilling campaigns, including:
The multi-metre intercepts from those campaigns confirm high-grade shoots that validate the geological model and reinforce the potential of the system. Highlights include:
| Hole ID | Interval (m) | From (m) | Grade (g/t Au) | Notable Subinterval |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BWRC006 | 8m | 41m | 8.78 | 2m @ 30.8 g/t Au |
| BWRC020 | 8m | 9m | 7.98 | 1m @ 32.4 and 1m @ 19.9 g/t Au |
| 21MRRC011 | 7m | 81m | 9.10 | 1m @ 56.1 g/t Au |
| 21MRRC003 | 15m | 45m | 2.51 | — |
| JBD001 | 19m | 114m | 1.72 | 1m @ 21.1 g/t Au |
| 21MRRC032 | 8m | 46m | 3.97 | 1m @ 20.2 g/t Au |
Mineralisation at Old Prospect varies in width from 5 to 15 metres, dipping steeply to the west at approximately 80 degrees and plunging north at approximately 80 degrees. Crucially, it remains open north-south along strike and at depth — the very areas that the next drilling campaign has been designed to target.
An Exploration Target is a range of tonnage and grade that a company's geologists believe may exist within a defined area, based on existing geological data, modelling, and drilling — but where insufficient work has been completed to classify it as a formal Mineral Resource under the JORC Code.
It is a forward-looking, conceptual estimate. The JORC Code requires companies to clearly state that the potential quantity and grade is conceptual in nature and that there is no certainty further exploration will result in a Mineral Resource estimate. Scorpion has done this appropriately in its announcement.
Exploration Targets serve as a signpost for the scale of what a company is chasing. When set alongside an existing Mineral Resource — as is the case here — they help investors understand the gap between what has already been defined and what the geology suggests might be achievable with additional drilling.
In SCN's case, the Exploration Target sits between 5x and 14x the tonnage of the existing resource, giving a tangible sense of the upside being tested.
Old Prospect is one component of Scorpion's much larger Pharos Project footprint. The Company holds approximately 900 square kilometres of granted tenure in the Murchison Mineral Field, located roughly 50 kilometres northwest of Cue.
Old Prospect sits within a 5-kilometre-long zone of mineralisation extending from Cap Lamp to Middle Bore — a corridor that remains largely open along strike to the north and south. Scorpion has described itself as holding the largest landholding along the Dalgaranga–Big Bell shear corridor, a regionally significant structural feature that hosts multiple historical gold deposits in the region.
Beyond gold, the Pharos Project also contains the Mt Mulcahy copper deposit, which hosts its own JORC 2012 Mineral Resource:
| Resource Category | Tonnes | Cu (%) | Zn (%) | Co (%) | Ag (g/t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Measured | 193,000 | 3.0 | 2.3 | 0.1 | 25 |
| Indicated | 372,000 | 2.2 | 1.7 | 0.1 | 19 |
| Inferred | 82,000 | 1.5 | 1.3 | 0.1 | 13 |
| Total | 647,000 | 2.4 | 1.8 | 0.1 | 20 |
This multi-commodity profile across a large and prospective land package adds meaningful optionality to the Scorpion investment case.
One of the more strategically important elements of this announcement is the ongoing MOU with Gylden Resources Pty Ltd, which is progressing toward formal agreements regarding mine development and processing at the Kirkalocka plant.
This matters because processing infrastructure in remote Western Australia is a genuine constraint for small gold developers. Access to an established plant could meaningfully reduce the capital intensity of bringing Old Prospect into production.
Scorpion's CEO explicitly connected the Old Prospect work programme to this processing optionality. While the formal agreements have not yet been executed, the progression of these discussions adds a near-term commercial layer to the exploration story.
Scorpion has not simply defined the target and moved on. In addition, a structured, multi-pronged exploration programme has been designed and is ready to execute:
The combination of infill drilling to grow the existing resource and step-out drilling to test the full extent of the Exploration Target makes the upcoming campaign a genuine de-risking and value-creation exercise.
Several attributes set Scorpion apart from peers at a comparable stage of development:
The Scorpion Minerals Old Prospect gold exploration target at Pharos Gold Project has positioned itself as a serious explorer in one of Western Australia's most enduring gold provinces, with a newly defined Exploration Target of 1.0 – 3.0 million tonnes grading 1.5 – 2.0 g/t Au setting the ambition for what the Old Prospect Zone could become. Sitting above an existing JORC resource of 21,600 ounces — 72% in the Indicated category — and supported by a well-designed follow-up drilling campaign, Old Prospect is shaping up as a genuine resource-growth story. With mineralisation open in multiple directions, a processing partnership in discussion, and one of the region's largest tenement packages behind it, SCN is a name investors interested in Murchison gold exposure should be watching closely.
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