Avalon Minerals believes an airborne electromagnetic (EM) survey covering its highly prospective Marloo Project in Western Australia"s Pilbara region will significantly enhance its uranium and base metals exploration activities.

The survey will form part of a much larger survey to be flown and partially funded by Geoscience Australia.

The Marloo Project, covering seven licences and 900sqkm, forms part of Avalon's Paterson Project in the Paterson province which hosts the Telfer Gold Mine, the Nifty Copper Mine and the uncomformity-styled Kintyre uranium deposit.

Avalon is focused on the potential for the discovery of unconformity-styled uranium mineralization at Marloo. Reconnaissance exploration work has reinforced its prospectivity for this style of mineralization, indicating that faults transecting the project area carried uranium-bearing fluids, with background scintillometer readings of up to 1,000cps recorded in outcropping faulted areas.

Historical exploration drilling confirms this strong anomalism, including a significant intersection of 1 metre at 237ppm uranium (from 117m) returned from a hole drilled by CRA Limited.

EM has considerable advantages over other exploration methods in the region - where large areas of sand cover, combined with poor magnetic variability, make it difficult to map the distribution of rock types and faults to effectively target areas with the greatest potential to host mineralization.

The three-dimensional EM survey is expected to greatly assist in defining the distribution of prospective host rocks units and delineating drilling targets.

On-ground exploration activities will start as soon as all appropriate Heritage Agreements are signed, enabling the tenements to be granted. The agreements are being finalized with the Western Desert Lands Aboriginal Corporation.

Avalon's managing director David McSweeney says: "We are committed to rapidly progressing exploration at the Marloo Project, with our immediate aim being to identify and define the source of the significant uranium and base metal anomalism identified within the project area by recent and historic exploration."