I don’t often comment on other companies, but in this week’s Boots on The Ground I want to take a look at a significant development made by one of our neighbours in the Kalahari Copper Belt.
10 days ago, ENRG Elements reported a cluster of anomalous, previously undrilled, chargeability anomalies at its Ghanzi West copper-silver project. (You can read the full ENRG announcement >>>HERE).
Ghanzi West lies immediately to the east of our Karakubis project and ENRG’s exploration results carry a a number of positive implications for our own efforts.
Painting a positive picture
To recap quickly, ENRG identified three domal features over Ghanzi West last year through Airborne Electromagnetic (“AEM”) and gravity surveying.
Importantly, these bear a striking similarity to domes discovered along strike by Sandfire at its Motheo Copper mine.
This was already positive for Kavango, as Karakubis lies adjacent to Motheo to the north (as well as land held by Rio Tinto to the west).
To follow up, ENRG completed Induced Polarisation, or IP, surveys over potential “trap sites” for mineralisation across the three targets.
Then, on 04 April, it announced that the work had – among other things – identified multiple high priority drill targets the firm will now go on to develop.
So, what exactly could this mean for us?
1) We appear to be exploring the same geological system as ENRG
As we previously announced, analysis of regional satellite gravity data points to a possible “basin margin” running from our Karakubis licence block into Ghanzi West.
ENRG’s claim that the strike length of D’Kar/Ngwako Pan formation contact style mineralisation could extend for 66km along the northern and southern boundaries of its survey area is, therefore, very encouraging for us and aligns with our interpretation.
For ENRG to have identified so many prospective drill targets on their ground gives us increasing confidence about the prospects of our own.
2) We appear to have similar geological features
Building on the previous point, ENRG’s combination of AEM and IP survey data confirmed positive geological characteristics at Ghanzi West.
We believe that Karakubis shares many of these.
Namely, the company said the lower D’Kar rock is tightly folded and extensively structurally deformed, greatly enhancing the potential for trap sites that host economic mineralisation.
It also believes there is the possibility of flatly dipping D’Kar/Ngwako Pan formation contact style mineralisation within 100-250m of surface over tens of kilometres of strike length.
We’ve made very similar initial observations about Karakubis, where our AEM and Controlled-Source Audio Magnetotelluric (“CSAMT”) surveys have indicated the likely abundant presence of tightly folded rocks at moderate depths. Remember, our drilling at PL082 confirmed we’ve developed a particularly powerful configuration for CSAMT surveys to identify such features from surface. This could be a huge advantage for us as we move forward with our exploration at Karakubis.
We’ll continue to complete our interpretation of our AEM and CSAMT survey data for the project to build on our initial observations around its structure and metal potential.
But to have the geological characteristics we’ve observed at Karakubis confirmed “next door” is an obvious plus point.
3) There appears to be a new technological advance we can benefit from
Finally, through the success of its work, it looks like ENRG has configured a form of IP survey that can be used to identify priority drill targets in this area of the KCB.
If this stands the test of the “truth detector” it will be a notable advance in the region, as it opens up another useful avenue for all our exploration efforts.
It adds to the growing toolset we’ve already contributed to with our deployment of CSAMT to identify zones of structural disturbance, brecciation, and alteration as well as anticlines and synclines from surface in the KCB.
Now, we have the option to use IP surveys to explore any prospective targets our own planned exploration efforts highlight both in Karakubis and our wider KCB land package.
Pushing us forward
There’s no guarantee that our progress at Karakubis will mirror ENRG’s at Ghanzi West. We need to complete our own exploration to assess the project’s mineral prospectivity.
But just as the third-party holes have supported our model for Ditau’s lode gold potential, ENRG’s latest results complement our exploration plans at an important stage in our quest to make metal discoveries.
And at no extra cost, to boot.
