London-listed Pensana has confirmed more high-grade anomalies of rare earths, scandium and fluorite at its Coola licence, which is located 16 km north of the company’s Longonjo rare earths project, in Angola.
The company embarked on further exploration activity in the third quarter of last year, after discovering technology metals in soils on the Coola licence in 2020. Encouraging results have been reported from the Coola carbonatite and the Sulima West deposit.
Pensana reports that 22 samples from a 4.2-km-diameter ring structure at Sulima West, located 50 km from the Coola carbonatite, were all mineralised and returned values of between 0.6% and 10.6% total rare earth oxide (TREO), averaging 4.2% TREO.
The iron content in these rocks averaged 28% and the manganese content averaged 5.6%.
The company says Sulima West has been intersected by ten large exploration trenches up to 90 m in length, coinciding with a large radiometric anomaly. The trenches are believed to have been excavated during the 1960s but have not been followed up with modern exploration methods.
Rock chip sampling of the 900-m-diameter Coola carbonatite ring dyke returned values of between 0.6% and 4.9% TREO, averaging 2.6% TREO. Soil geochemistry over the covered carbonatite returned values of between 0.37% TREO and 13.18% TREO, averaging 3.21%.
Pensana exploration manager Grant Hayward says the company is encouraged by the initial results from both Coola and Sulima West, and is eager for the field season to start, to follow up on these targets.
“While it is early stage, these are large structures reporting grades which are in some cases higher than those for Longonjo. There are several radiometric anomalies and ring structures still to be evaluated, and we are looking forward to further exploration in 2022.”