Discovery Nickel Ltd Announce Drilling Programme At Maun Copper Project

Discovery Nickel Ltd Announce Drilling Programme At Maun Copper Project

Discovery Nickel Limited (ASX: DNL) plans to commence its maiden exploration drilling in July on the Maun Copper Project in Botswana after announcing a 20 million tonne copper resource for the project on Wednesday.

Brisbane-based Discovery said an independent evaluation of historical drilling data at Maun revealed a Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) Inferred Resource of 20.1 million tonnes at 1.2% copper – the first JORC resource calculation for the project, located in northwest Botswana.

Analysis of the earlier data – generated during exploration by mining giants Anglo America and BHP Billiton predecessor, Gencor Limited, in the 1980s-1990s – also showed higher than expected indications of silver.

“The JORC-compliant resource for Maun is the first major step towards determining if the project has the potential to support a medium scale copper-silver operation,” Discovery’s Managing Director, Jeremy Read, said.

“The definition of the 20 million tonne copper resource provides an excellent platform upon which to build,” Read said.

“Drilling will be undertaken to test new geological models not previously applied to the Maun Project that could, potentially, extend sections of the Inferred Resource above 2% copper.

The Maun Copper Project comprises seven granted prospecting licences covering an area of 6,333 square kilometres within the Kalahari Copper Belt in northwest Botswana.

The most significant occurrences of known copper-silver mineralisation occur at the G and P grids where Discovery has been concentrating the majority of its assessment work.

Previous drilling on the project has defined over 300 strike kilometres of copper-silver mineralisation interpreted as having strong similarities with the giant Zambian copper deposits.

Share this post