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Botswana Diamonds to intensify Orapa exploration

5th March 2015

  

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-listed Botswana Diamonds, through its 50:50 joint venture (JV) with Russian diamond miner Alrosa, would spend $1-million this year on the exploration of its licence at Orapa, Botswana.

The JV partners were aiming to discover major new kimberlites during the year.

They were also working towards updating priority targets by June.

A team of seven Alrosa geologists, mineralogists and geophysicists were working with the Botswana Diamonds team on conducting follow-up exploration on blocks PL 206, PL 207 and PL 210 of the 249 km2 licence area.

A comprehensive exploration programme conducted in the third quarter of last year, followed by detailed analyses in the Alrosa laboratories, had highlighted specific target areas on the above blocks.  The next stage of work will entail further soil sampling, electromagnetic and ground magnetic surveys.

“Using the comprehensive databases supplied by Botswana Diamonds, [its] own proprietary technology and the results of the first exploration programme, Alrosa focused its efforts on priority ground,” chairperson John Teeling said.

He added that Alrosa’s on-site approach, using “highly skilled and experienced” geologists for all facets of fieldwork, together with on-site mineralogical analyses, was “impressive, efficient and timely”.

Through an on-site mobile laboratory, soil and hard rock samples were immediately analysed. Kimberlitic Indicator Minerals (KIMs) such as garnets, picroilmenites, chrome diopsides and pyropes were compared with the ‘fingerprint’ of the same minerals from local diamond mines Orapa, Damtshaa and Letlhakane.

This procedure saved time and money by focusing the work, giving prompt direction for the next stages of exploration.

Selected KIMs and rock samples were then sent to the Alrosa central laboratories for more detailed analyses. The generated data was then married to the geophysical data collected. The result was an exploration programme focused on the discovery of new kimberlites.

The latest exploration programme would verify the likely source of the KIMs found on PL 206; focus on the north-east of PL 207, where a high concentration of KIMs, including two diamonds, were found; and carry out additional heavy concentrate sampling on PL 210, where analyses of the heavy pyrope concentration found suggests that the pyropes of various sizes and colours are in close proximity to a potential kimberlite.

Edited by Chanel de Bruyn
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

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