Australian explorer identifies big uranium target in Botswana

Impact Minerals believes its on the track of a potentially large new uranium province in Botswana after defining the Lekobolo prospect that covers about 110 square kilometres and contains elevated uranium-in-soil values.

PERTH - 

Active Botswana explorer Impact Minerals (ASX: IPT) said today that its Kekobolo prospect has a geological setting similar to the Letlhakane uranium deposit, owned by another Australian explorer A-Cap Resources Ltd (ASX: ACB).

Lekobolo is 20 km along strike to the south west of the large Letlhakane uranium deposit that covers an area of about 30 sq km. A-Cap Resources has reported its project has an inferred resource of 98 million lb of uranium oxide grading 158 ppm at a cut-off grade of 100 ppm. That deposit is hosted by near-surface calcrete and by Karoo Group sediments.

Impact's managing director Dr Mike Jones said there has been no previous drilling for uranium in the Lekobolo area.

Impact's ground-holding in Botswana comprises 27,000 square kilometres of granted Prospecting Licences that cover the prospective Karoo Group sedimentary rocks and the younger Kalahari Group sediments and calcrete.

Soil surveying at Lekobolo comprised 945 samples taken at 500 metre intervals along lines one kilometre apart and analysed for uranium by the MMI-M partial digest method at a laboratory in Perth.

Jones said the soil results defined a large area up to 16 km long and 7 km wide that trends north west to south east and contains elevated uranium-in-soil values of between 5 and 200 times background. There are at least six priority targets that cover almost 30 sq km.

Follow up field checking is in progress and so is selection of specific areas to be drilled in December, weather permitting.

Some parallels were drawn to the prospect with Paladin Energy Ltd's Kayelekera uranium project at its second uranium mine in Africa.

Jones said the uranium-in-soil results at Lekobolo are significant and support the high prospectivity for both Karoo and calcrete-hosted uranium mineralisation.

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