Lithic’s Zambian Uranium Properties Begin To Shape Up, With An Additional Wildcard Or Two From Togo Thrown In
By Alastair Ford
minesite.com[tt_news]=45549&tx_ttnews[backPid]=755&cHash=47a7061367
How many people do you know walking around town with a Thermo Scientific Radeye Pro Personal Radiation Detector in their pocket? Here at Minesite we can name at least one: Jim Kerr, managing director of Lithic Metals & Energy. Such a radiation detector can be put to many uses. One of the most interesting is to point it close in at a novice exploration geologist, into whose pocket you’ve just slipped a small chunk of U308, and watch as his face crumples when he’s suddenly confronted with his own personal radiation reading at thousands of counts per second.
Here in London a more practical use for a radiation detector is to demonstrate to investors and journalists the radioactivity of rocks. Mr Kerr also carries a small lump of davidite with him, pulled from the ground at Lithic’s Oryx uranium prospect in Zambia. Put the two together, and – hey presto! – between 3,000 and 4,000 counts per second. That stuff really is radioactive!
Lithic has come a long way since its initial inception under a different name as a nickel play, back in 2005. Metaphorically, that is. In physical terms the company is still in the same old spot, on the ground just north of the Great Zambezi, and still in bed with its original parent Zambezi Resources, who’s ground it’s working. It was Zambezi Resources that originally generated Lithic’s Oryx uranium target, the most promising looking prospect on a landholding that now boasts several good-looking targets. Back then, though, cynics argued that it was no co-incidence that just as the uranium boom was taking off, so Zambezi suddenly happened upon some uranium.
But that’s all a long way in the past now. Whether or not Oryx was originally just a mild bit of market opportunism, it’s now shaping up into a serious target. Whereas in 2006, a network of trenches was just being established, now it’s virtually complete. Back then, there were uranium shows in the samples, now there is visible davidite in outcrop. Back then the anomaly had only recently showed up on the geophysics, now Lithic has U308 grades running up at three per cent and even five per cent.
On the strength of all that, it was imperative to get drilling and have a look, or as Mr Kerr puts it, “suck it and see”. So drilling on Oryx started on 6th May, and the rig should be turning for around a month before moving onto another potential showing to the north at Mvula. The plan initially is to put in a couple of scout holes and see what they produce. Overall Oryx should boast around 2,000 metres of drilling by the middle of the year. The trick then will be to turn round the assays in reasonable time – no easy task given the backlogs and power shortages in South African labs, as Kryso has found to its cost - for which click here. So exactly when the results will become known is hard to say. Given that Mr Kerr says expansively of his properties “we have rather a lot of uranium to chase up”, it may well be some time before the full picture becomes clear. However, it will probably be worth the wait, and no matter, because the company raised £4 million in November 2007, which should be enough to see it through for two years, and with £1 million to spare on current budgets.
In the meantime investors can look forward to developments on the company’s Togo properties to add a bit of spice. “Togo, good old Togo…” says Mr Kerr, by way of an introduction to one of the few African countries that lies off mining’s beaten track. According to anyone’s best guess the only metaliferous mining that’s ever taken place in the country was undertaken by Pechiney in the 1950s. But after Lithic bought a Togo-based Steve Dattels vehicle, the company has now got saprolitic nickel, zinc and uranium in its sights. It recently flew the first airborne geophysical survey of the country – that is if you don’t count the German who originally discovered Lithic’s Niamtougou-Kara uranium property by leaning out of the window of a Cessna holding a scintillometer. What that’ll come up with remains open to question. But as Mr Kerr says, with exploration “you always have to roll the dice”. Perhaps this time next year it’ll be Togolese rock that he brings out of his pocket to run his radiation detector over. |
