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PROJECTS

Aura has been established to make discoveries of economic uranium deposits. Its strengths are its exploration team, the portfolio of exploration properties that it is exploring, and the opportunities that exist for the future growth of the Company. A substantial business development programme to acquire additional assets has already commenced.

The Company is currently exploring for sandstone and calcrete-hosted deposits in Western Australia.

Central Yilgarn

The Lake Barlee (to the north) and Lake Giles (to the south) tenements occur on a southern arm of the lakes of the same names. The former possesses a high tenor, coherent uranium channel airborne radiometric anomaly over a large area of sediments within the lake.

A previous explorer sampled strongly radioactive white and hard material on the banks of the salt lake immediately to the northeast of the Lake Barlee tenement. [These contained 2.68 and 4.02 kg/t U3O8.]

There has been no previous uranium exploration in the radiometrically anomalous areas. The tenements are located on Pastoral Leasehold lands.

The main uranium radiometric feature on the Lake Giles tenement occurs where a 20 kilometre-long drainage from the southwest enters the lake. Again this feature has not been explored for uranium.
The exploration programme for the Central Yilgarn properties will commence with surface reconnaissance, including detailed radiometric surveys and sampling. The strong radiometric features will then be systematically tested utilising shallow air-core drilling.

Eastern Yilgarn

Aura has three substantial uranium projects in areas where the Officer and Eucla Basins adjoin the Archaean Yilgarn Block. This region has known uranium projects at Mulga Rock, Ponton and Thatcher Soak. All three projects have geological characteristics similar to the sandstone- hosted and Mulga Rock type deposits, and the Neale and Lake Minigwal Projects are also prospective for calcrete-type uranium deposits.

• The Neale Project

The Neale Project comprises two large exploration licence applications covering 377 square kilometres of Lake Rason and the radiometrically anomalous channel that leads southeastwards into the Eucla Basin. The Project extends over a 57 kilometre length of the drainage system.

There is a striking similarity between the geological and geographical setting of the Neale Project and those of the Ponton and Mulga Rocks uranium deposits to the southwest. The sandstone-hosted deposits formed in Tertiary palaeo-channels cut into the eastern margin of the Archaean Yilgarn Block. At Ponton and Mulga Rocks, oxidised groundwater carrying uranium is interpreted as having come into contact with carbonaceous material in the channel sediments, causing the uranium to precipitate.

The digital elevation model shows that the relief pattern at Neale resembles that in the Ponton area, adjacent to Aura's Kirgella Rocks Project. From this comparison, it is interpreted that the Lake Rason channel is filled with  Tertiary sediments similar to those at Ponton and Mulga Rocks, providing a good exploration opportunity to test  their potential.

Radiometric coverage is incomplete for the project area. There is standard Geoscience Australia coverage for the western part of the Project Area. However, the eastern section has been flown recently, and only a preliminary radiometric image has been released by the Western Australia Department of Industry and Resources. However, strong radiometric features occur along the length of Lake Rason. In addition the preliminary image for the eastern part of the Project Area indicates that these radiometric features extend to the eastern end of the lake, and along the drainage system to the south.

Digital elevation model showing Aura Projects and uranium deposits (triangles)

No systematic exploration for any commodity is reported for the area of the Neale Project tenements. W. Johnson and J.W. Johnson held a Temporary Reserve that included part of Lake Rason within the Neale Project in 1981. The tenement holders carried out field follow-up of a single radiometric anomaly within the Neale Project. This was located on the northern shore of Lake Rason, where lake sediments overlay highly weathered sandstones of the Paterson Formation. One sample that was assayed from this locality contained 25ppm uranium. This indicates that the processes that lead to calcrete uranium deposition are occurring in the Lake Rason area, and confirms the potential for this style of mineralisation in the Project Area.

• Kirgella Rocks

Kirgella Rocks follows an eastern sector of the Lake Raeside drainage system which contains several  calcrete uranium deposits in its upper reaches. In addition Paladin's Ponton Uranium Project adjoins Kirgella to the east.

The Ponton uranium deposit is located within an area of anomalous radioactivity in channel sands which is up to 15 kilometres in length. Within this section, individual areas of  uranium mineralisation are typically several hundreds of metres in length.

Past drilling shows that carbonaceous channel sands occur along Ponton Creek in the Kirgella Rocks Project Area, and that in places these are radioactive. Uranerz and PNC drilled sections of the lower channel sands in the southeast of the tenement in the Project Area.

However, in general, the area has been very sparsely tested. Only four drill holes have intersected the Ponton Creek palaeo-channel over the 50 kilometres of strike length held by Aura. Consequently Aura considered that there is considerable potential for sandstone-hosted deposits within the under-explored parts of the Project Area.

Shaws Bore

The Shaws Bore tenement covers one of the upper sections of the major Lake Raeside drainage, in which are also located the Kirgella Rocks tenement and part of the Altona Project. The nearest known uranium mineralisation in this system is 20 kilometres to the northeast at Shepherd Well held by Aldershot Resources.

The radiometric features at Shaws Bore occur along an 11 kilometre long stretch of a creek system leading towards the most western arm of Lake Barlee. There is no record of these features being tested by past uranium exploration.

There is no record that this radiometric anomaly has been tested for uranium.

Sweden

Aura Energy has lodged applications for a significant landholding in one of the world's major uranium provinces in Sweden.

The Alum Shale Formation of Scandinavia is regarded as the largest known uranium resource in Europe. The shale is widely distributed throughout the Baltic States. The Swedish section contains exceptionally large resources of uranium, vanadium, molybdenum and nickel.

Aura has applied to the Bergsstaten (Swedish Mines Inspectorate) for five exploration licences in Jämtland, a county in the centre of Sweden adjoining the Norwegian border.

Aura applications cover 64 square kilometres of outcropping and near-surface Alum Shale,where it would be amenable to open pit mining.

Aura's proposed exploration in its licence application areas will focus on establishing the distribution of the Alum Shale and defining those areas where the higher grade uranium, molybdenum and vanadium shales are located. Consequently the initial programmes will be drilling based.

A programme to investigate the options available for extracting uranium and other metals will start when sample material is available.

The regional centre of Östersund is within 30 kilometres of all the Aura applications and the area has good access roads.

Wondinong

Several calcrete uranium deposits, including Yeelirrie, Lake Way, Lake Austin and Wondinong, were discovered in Western Australia in the 1970s. The Wondinong mineralisation was discovered by WMC in 1971. The Wondinong Project occurs on the delta where the Wondinong-Windsor drainage system enters at the eastern shore of Lake Austin near Mt Magnet in Western Australia. The main mineralisation occurs as a thin sheet, the top of which is between 0.3 and 2.4 metres below the current ground surface, with a second deeper zone developed between 3.5 and 4.5m on the north-western edge of the deposit.

Further potential to increase the resource in the untested extensions of the deposit to the south and west.