Elevate lifts off on high-grade uranium hits at Hirabeb
Mining
Mining
Special Report: Drilling at the Hirabeb prospect within Elevate Uranium’s Koppies project in Namibia has returned high-grade results including a stand-out intersection of 2m grading 1482ppm eU3O8.
Notably for the company, the mineralisation at the prospect appears to be shallow with all significant intersections made to date starting from within 10m of surface.
This drilling at Hirabeb, which demonstrates a similar mineralisation style to that of the existing Koppies resource of 57.8Mlb U3O8 about 12km to the north, was focussed on a 4.5km strike in the south-central area of the large 545km2 tenement and returned notable assays of:
Elevate Uranium (ASX:EL8) added that while earlier phases of drilling had indicated that Hirabeb mineralisation was constrained to the east-west trending palaeochannel system, this drill campaign has indicated that this is certainly not the case by intersecting uranium beyond the defined palaeochannel and into the basement lithologies.
In fact, 38% of the high-grade >1000ppm eU3O8 intervals were intersected within the basement lithology.
The company adds that many of the earlier holes were terminated at depths of less than 4m if the palaeochannel was not encountered, meaning that they did not sufficiently test the recently identified basement hosted mineralisation.
This provides many exploration opportunities in areas that had only been drilled with shallow holes.
On this basis, the company’s interpretation of results from exploration drilling completed earlier this calendar year has identified four new exploration target areas – all of which have sparse drilling – at Hirabeb that warrant further investigation.
“The Hirabeb Prospect continues to expand with recent drilling confirming extensions to the mineralised zone over a large area,” managing director Murray Hill said.
“The results are impressive, displaying good thickness of mineralisation with some excellent grades in excess of 1000 ppm eU3O8. In addition, ongoing geological review of results to date has identified four new target areas warranting follow up.
“This is very encouraging with the Hirabeb tenement boundary located less than 12 kilometres from the tenement boundary of the Koppies resource and potentially could become a satellite to the existing Koppies Resource.
“Distribution of the mineralisation at Hirabeb shows similarities to that at the Koppies resource, with the majority of the mineralisation intersected to date commencing at a depth less than 10 metres from surface.
“Like the Koppies resource, the mineralisation is not constrained by the palaeochannel but also extends into basement lithologies. This is exciting as it indicates the opportunity for growth of the mineralised areas.”
Drilling at Hirabeb is expected to continue for the rest of the calendar year as EL8 works towards defining and estimating a maiden resource.
This article was developed in collaboration with Elevate Uranium, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.