Marriott's Ni prospect, Leonora Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Marriott's Ni prospect	Prospect
Leonora Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The Marriott's nickel deposit is just north of Mount Clifford deposit. It was explored by Western Mining Corporation from 1969 to 1972. The site was acquired from BHP Billiton by Australian Mines Ltd in 2006. They explored some more, but with the decrease in nickel price, with low grade of the deposit, the interest in it has waned.

A 2007 estimate states the deposit contains 830 000 tonnes at 1.13% Ni yielding 9400 tonnes of nickel.

Marriott's is a shallow nickel sulphide body with at least three lens of disseminated and stringer ore. Immediately overlying the spinifex textured upper margin of a gabbroic unit, is a sequence of compound komatiite flow lodes hosting the prospect. The sequence shows multiple thin ( up to 10 metres) komatiite flows, some with irregular spinifex zones, or veins, or patches of coarse herringbone or branching plate harrisitic olivine.

There is some outcropping, but contacts are indistinct. Ni sulphides occur in 3 narrow zones, in an unusual form of scattered spherical blebs up to 1 cm across within olivine adcumulates, and in spinifex patches. Fresh rock contains trevorite, heazlewoodite and native nickel. At the surface the blebs have been replaced by limonite, and form distinct weathered spheres.

References

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