Romang Island is located in Eastern Indonesia, approximately 800km north-west of Darwin.  Romang lies within the Sunda magmatic arc which hosts several world class gold and base metal deposits including Newmont's massive Batu Hijau orebody (920 million metric tonnes at 0.55 percent copper and 0.42 grams per tonne gold).

Robust Resources, through its Indonesian joint venture partners PT Gemala Borneo Utama (PT GBU), holds mining authorities covering 250 square kilometres, including all of Romang Island. Romang Island is strongly mineralised and prospective for several styles of mineralisation in two main areas to the north and south.


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Southern (Lakuwahi) Targets

Recognising geological similarities to their gold-barite mines on Wetar Island, Billiton explored and drilled the Lakuwahi prospect during the period 1988-1990. Despite clear indications of a very large mineralising system, and an 80 percent hit-rate in scout drilling, historic low metal prices and a corporate move away from gold found Billiton discontinuing the exploration programme.

Available geological evidence indicates that Lakuwahi is situated within the caldera of an extinct submarine volcano. A large, strong hydrothermal mineralising system developed within the caldera, which has been estimated from surface geology, geochemistry and aeromagnetic data to be approximately 20 square kilometres in area.

Mineralisation styles recognised at Lakuwahi include thick zones of lead-zinc-silver sulphide breccias, and, gold associated with massive barite. While both of these styles represent attractive exploration targets, the geological setting also lends itself to the formation of a third style, sea-floor massive sulphides, which usually contain high grades of copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver.
Significant drill intersections from the Billiton scout drilling include:

bullet LWD 02: 1 gram per tonne gold over its entire length of 73.9 metres including 
 
bullet 2 metres at 8.1 grams per tonne gold
bullet 10 metres at 1.4 grams per tonne gold, 63 grams per tonne silver and 0.52 percent copper
bullet LWD 07: 1 gram per tonne gold over its entire length of 67.4 metres, including
 
bullet 4 metres at 2.3 grams per tonne gold
bullet 3 metres at 2.4 grams per tonne gold
bullet LWD 06: 4 metres at 2.5 grams per tonne gold, 150 grams per tonne silver, 3.1 percent lead and 3.7 percent zinc.
bullet LWD 08: 31m at 1.2 grams per tonne gold, 2.9 percent lead and 1.8 percent zinc.


Northern (Solat Bay) Targets

Nine prospect areas exist in the North of the Island. Only 3 of these have been explored and only 1 (Kiahar) was drilled. A near surface, high-grade gold-silver-lead vein drill target was discovered in 1991 by the Muswellbrook Energy and Minerals (part of the Ashton Mining Group). Assays up to 26.7 grams per tonne gold, 438 grams per tonne silver and 19 percent lead were returned from rock chip and channel samples.

Diamond drilling of the vein systems indicated two separate zones of mineralisation with a strike extent over 200 metres, a down-dip dimension of at least 110 metres and averaging 2.5 metres in thickness. Only a small amount of information from this drilling is available but one hole is known to have intersected 2.5 metres at 1.89 grams per tonne gold, 98 grams per tonne silver and 30 percent lead from 19.5 metres.

The very high grade lead values evident in the Solat Bay area open the exciting possibility of designing an early low-CAPEX production start up by direct shipping of high value galena ore (30 percent lead is approximately equivalent in value to 1 ounce per tonne gold ore).


Independent Review

Independent consulting geologists Agricola Mining Consultants Pty Ltd reviewed the Romang Island project in December 2007 and stated the project has "significant potential for the discovery of both very large base metal - gold breccia hosted deposits and exhalative volcanogenic massive sulphide base metal - precious metal deposits."

"It is significant from a mineral exploration viewpoint that only exposed mineralisation has been tested by drilling and sampling. The vast majority of the target remains to be tested, preserved beneath the layers of tuft and limestone,"

"the size potential of Romang for breccia-style mineralisation is simply enormous." their report stated.

Option to earn up to 75 percent equity

Under an agreement with PT Gemala Borneo Utama (PT GBU) Robust is paying five million shares plus 150,000 Australian dollars in cash; and will spend 1.5 million Australian dollars on exploration for a 51 percent interest in five mineral titles totalling 25,000 hectares covering the entire Romang Island.

Robust has an option to earn a further 24 percent (taking equity to 75 percent) with expenditure of a further 3 million Australian dollars.

PT GBU and sister company PT Mineralindo Rejeki Alam (MRA) have been actively involved in the Indonesian mining industry since 1987 and have highly experienced Australian and Indonesian principals. GBU has been on Romang Island since early 2006 and have operated within Indonesia for over 20 years.

Exploration Programme

The exploration program will be firmly targeted on the discovery of commercially exploitable ore deposits.

This will be achieved by:

bullet Follow up drilling of mineralised targets identified by both Billiton and Ashton (The Lakuwahi prospect is ready for immediate drilling and PT GBU is mobilising its two "man-portable" diamond drill rigs to the project).
bullet Undertaking geophysical, geological and geochemical surveys designed to outline high-grade massive sulphide targets, which will then be scout drilled.

PT GBU will operate the exploration program on under the direction of Robust Resources Management team.

Significant Intersections Lakuwahi

Mag Data Lakuwahi