Uranium explorer identifies big target in Botswana
Staff Writer | Thursday November 19, 2009 00:00
Impact Minerals said yesterday that its Kekobolo prospect has a geological setting similar to the Letlhakane uranium deposit, owned by another Australian explorer A-Cap Resources Ltd.
Lekobolo is 20 km along strike to the south west of the large Letlhakane uranium deposit that covers an area of about 30 square kilometres.
A-Cap Resources has reported its project has an inferred resource of 98 million lb of uranium oxide grading 158 ppm at a cut-off grade of 100 ppm. That deposit is hosted by near-surface calcrete and by Karoo Group sediments.
Impact's managing director Dr Mike Jones said there has been no previous drilling for uranium in the Lekobolo area.
Impact's ground-holding in Botswana comprises 27,000 square kilometres of granted Prospecting Licences that cover the prospective Karoo Group sedimentary rocks and the younger Kalahari Group sediments and calcrete.
Soil surveying at Lekobolo comprised 945 samples taken at 500 metre intervals along lines one kilometre apart and analysed for uranium by the MMI-M partial digest method at a laboratory in Perth.
Jones said the soil results defined a large area up to 16 km long and 7 km wide that trends north-west to south east and contains elevated uranium-in-soil values of between 5 and 200 times background. There are at least six priority targets that cover almost 30 sq km.
Follow up field checking is in progress and so is selection of specific areas to be drilled in December, weather permitting.
Some parallels were drawn to the prospect with Paladin Energy Ltd's Kayelekera uranium project at its second uranium mine in Africa.
Jones said the uranium-in-soil results at Lekobolo are significant and support the high prospectivity for both Karoo and calcrete-hosted uranium mineralisation.
Impact Minerals says it hopes to start developing a uranium project in the country as early as next year.
Dr Jones says the potential to develop the project has always been there, explaining that the area was not developed before because a layer of sand, no thicker than 10 m, covers the top of the area, preventing the radiometric anomalies from being discovered.
He adds that Botswana offers an attractive investment option to the company, with the most attractive aspect being the country's political stability.
He notes that, because mining contributes between 40 percent and 50 percent to Botswana's gross domestic product, the Botswana government is highly supportive of mining initiatives.