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Lucara awarded prospecting licences near Karowe

Lucara awarded prospecting licences near Karowe

Photo by Duane Daws

16th September 2014

By: Creamer Media Reporter

  

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Vancouver-headquartered Lucara Diamond Corp has been granted two exploration licences in the Orapa kimberlite field in Botswana, in close proximity to its Karowe diamond mine, which it opened in 2012.

Both prospecting licence areas host known diamondiferous kimberlites and Lucara stated on Monday that it would initiate work programmes as soon as practical.

“The Orapa kimberlite field is a world-class location for diamond deposits and the opportunity to further evaluate known kimberlites within this region provides the opportunity to apply knowledge gained from the Karowe mine to other pipes in the same region,” CEO William Lamb commented in a media statement.

The Karowe mine has shaped up to be an “extremely successful” operation, exceeding its production and cost targets and frequently delivering stones larger than 10.8 ct.

Block A, or the BK2 licence, is 1.07 km2 in area and located about 30 km to the east of the Karowe mine. The BK2 kimberlite has a surface area of approximately 2.4 ha and is exposed at surface in a series of narrow trenches. BK2 was discovered in 1967 and has seen episodic exploration with programmes ranging from surface trenching, drilling, and microdiamond sampling.

Lucara stated that previous operators had conducted microdiamond sampling on drill chips and surface trench material. “A sample of fresh magmatic kimberlite from drilling returned a total of 800 microdiamonds from a 134.4 kg sample. A total of six diamonds were larger than 0.850 mm in size. The previous operator concluded that many of the microdiamonds were fragments of a larger diamond that was likely broken during sampling,” the company said.

Lucara said it planned to conduct a full site assessment and locate areas amenable for the extraction of a large volume of kimberlite for diamond content and size distribution analysis.

Block E is 55.4 km2 in area and located immediately to the south and east of Debswana's Orapa mine lease and about 15 km to the north of the Karowe mine. The prospecting licence holds four known kimberlite occurrences (AK11, 12, 13 and 14). The company stated that previous operators had processed large diameter drill chips that had confirmed the AK12 kimberlite was diamondiferous. AK 11 was poorly constrained geologically. Both kimberlites were beneath a thin veneer of sand cover and might be amenable to trenching and mini-bulk sampling for diamond content and size distribution analysis. AK13 and AK14 were poorly understood and Lucara said that they might be dykes.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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