JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-listed Kibo Mining reported on Tuesday that it completed a topographical survey of the Rukwa coal resource drill collars, which would be used to prepare a new resource statement for the Rukwa thermal coal deposit, in the Mbeya region of Tanzania.

The project currently had an indicated resource of 71.33-million tons and an inferred resource of 38.05-million tons, while the Tanzania-focused mineral exploration and development company expected a large part of the existing indicated resource to be upgraded to the measured resource under the Joint Ore Reserves Committee.

Kibo explained that the restatement of the resource in the “measured” category was necessary to prepare for the start of the next stage of development of the Rukwa coal-to-power project (RCPP) and marked the start of the first phase of the feasibility studies that were planned for the RCPP during 2014. The new resource statement was expected early in first quarter of next year.   

Meanwhile, the drill programme at Kibo’s newly acquired Imweru exploration project, in northern Tanzania, was nearing completion, with Kibo estimating that the project would be completed during the first week of December at the current rate.

The Imweru drill programme was aimed at improving the project’s current resource statement, both qualitatively and quantitatively, as a prerequisite to advancing to the scoping-study stage. Prior to this drilling phase, the project had a National Instrument 43-101-compliant inferred resource of 629 600 oz of gold.

Drilling for the exploration drill programme, announced on October 28, started on November 1 and had, since this date, maintained an execution rate well ahead of schedule. 

To date, the average daily drilling rate stood at 109 m/d, which was well above the planned 75 m/d for reverse circulation (RC) drilling, with the daily diamond drill rate averaging 70 m/d compared with the planned rate of 40 m/d.

The current status of the Imweru drill programme involved the completion of the diamond drilling within seven days, well ahead of the scheduled completion date, with a total of 488 m drilled compared with the 450 m planned. 

Further, RC drilling was currently 20% ahead of schedule, with 65% of the programme completed at this stage – 1 850 m was drilled to date compared with the 1 275 m planned.

First samples from the drill programme were submitted to the analysis laboratory on November 11 and the final results for the entire project were expected during the second week of January 2014, assuming no delays were experienced at the analysis laboratory over the next eight weeks. A site visit by the appointed independent competent person was also completed on November 18. 

A second-stage drill programme was already planned for the project and would be implemented in early 2014, contingent on satisfactory results being received from the current programme.

Kibo CEO Louis Coetzee said the company was impressed with the progress on Rukwa and Imweru thus far, commenting that the Rukwa topographical survey also marked the first step to starting development work on the project.

“Imweru is currently delivering exciting new observations of mineralisation and quartz veins, which bodes well for the Phase 2 drill programme. The current Imweru programme also, once again, highlighted Kibo’s operational readiness and capacity to plan, implement and execute exploration programmes very successfully,” he noted.