Botswana Mining Review Comprehensive Coverage of the Progress and Achievements in the Mining Sector
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Botswana Diamonds has finished its nine-hole drilling program on the South African Thorny River property.
The goal was to determine if two kimberlite blows (the River and River Extension blow) might be combined into a single orebody, boosting the overall resource and improving the project’s commercial prospects.
A total of 9 percussion holes with a total length of 483 meters were bored. One hole intersected 19.1 meters of kimberlite zone, the thickest thickness found in any of the three drilling programs to date.
Another hole intersected a thickness of 13.5m of kimberlite zone. These two intersections came from extending the River Blow toward the Extension Blow. The average kimberlite zone intersection was between 1.5 and 5 metres.
Work has now begun to create a model of the combined blows to estimate the potential resource with plans for a possible open cast mining.
Two new additional targets have been identified close to the current area. These could also be blows, thus increasing resources. They will be drilled.
John Teeling, the Chairman, commented: “This is an excellent set of results. The two blows are, as we hoped, connected – thus increasing the resource. The two thickest intersections close to the River Blow are particularly exciting. Given these results, we are now examining commercial mine alternatives”.
