Cliffs Nickel Mine (Cliffs-Charterhall; Mount Keith-Cliffs Charterhall), Mount Keith, Wiluna Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Cliffs Nickel Mine (Cliffs-Charterhall; Mount Keith-Cliffs Charterhall)	Mine
Mount Keith	Village
Wiluna Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The Cliffs Nickel Mine is an underground operation owned by BHP Billiton, 4 kilometres south of the Mount Keith Nickel Mine, and about 1 kilometre east of the Goldfields Highway. The site is marked by some colourbond sheds, however its footprint in the landscape is slight as all the mining since it opened in 2008 has been underground, the ore trucked to a processing plant at Leinster, 60 kilometres to the south.

It is a massive nickel deposit, the eighth largest in the Yilgarn Block. It consists of a lower olivine ortho- to mesocumulate unit, of variable thickness along strike, overlain by a thin spinifex textured komatiite flow units, intercalated with sulphidic tuffaceous shales. Cliffs is a massive Ni deposit at the base in the lower ortho-mesocumulate unit. The ore body is less than 6 metres thick, 500 metres wide, plunges gently south from the surface for a distance of 1.5 kilometres. It ends to the south in a structurally complex zone, interpreted as the vent for the lava.

The ore body is typically under 5% Ni, strongly zoned with 1-3% Ni flanks. There is a barren massive Fe sulphide unit on the flanks of the ore body. As a difference to the Mt Keith deposit, the Cliffs Ultramafic Unit is vesicular, with rare carbonate filled vesicules in the thinner flows.

Nickel and cobalt is mined. In 2012, it was estimated the deposit had a resource of 62 Mt @2.6 Ni.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

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