Energy: Uranium hits power up Marenica’s Namibian project

Marenica Energy (ASX:MEY) continues to uncover the potential of its Koppies uranium tenement in Namibia with promising new drill hits.

Latest drilling has delivered a hit of up to 2m at 4504 parts per million (ppm) uranium.

Exploration has also discovered a second palaeochannel over a 3.6km length, which demonstrates that there is further uranium mineralisation within the Koppies area.

This is encouraging given that less than 5 per cent of the tenement has been explored to date.

The top drill result is contained within a broader near-surface intersection of 13m grading 905ppm uranium. Another significant hit is a 10m intersection at 687ppm uranium from a depth of 2m that included 2m at 1974ppm uranium.

“With such fantastic results, the Koppies story continues to develop, with excellent grades achieved from phase 2 drilling, coupled with the discovery of a new highly mineralised palaeochannel at Koppies 2,” managing director Murray Hill said.

Mineralisation at Koppies is calcrete hosted within palaeochannels, the same style of ore used to develop Marenica’s U-pgrade uranium beneficiation process.

This could result in a significant reduction in development costs compared to the company’s peers with similar grade ores in Namibia.

In other ASX energy news today:

On the oil and gas front, State Gas (ASX:GAS) is preparing to carry out wireline logging and permeability testing to assess the unexpected discovery of a conventional gas reservoir at the Aldinga East-1A well in its Reid’s Dome gas project in Queensland.

Originally planned as a coal seam gas well, Aldinga East-1A started flowing gas while drilling through the coal-bearing Reid’s Dome Beds formation.

This is believed to be coming from a sandstone reservoir within the formation, as coal seams do not usually flow gas until the pressure in the well has been reduced by pumping fluid out of the well.

The wireline logging will be used to identify coal seams and gas sands intersected in the well, including the most productive gas zones.

State Gas said that should the conventional reservoir produce significant quantities of gas, it will enhance the economics of any coal seam gas project within its permit.

Key Petroleum (ASX:KEY) has de-risked the Chandos prospect within its Canaway Ridge project in Queensland after reprocessing existing 2D seismic and carrying out a geochemical survey. The Chandos-1 exploration well drilled in 1966 had recovered 3.9 barrels of oil from a drill stem test in the Wimma sandstone formation. Further oil and gas shows were present in the deeper Permian section.