Deep Yellow Limited (ASX: DYL) has announced a significant increase in resource at Tumas 1 East located within the Reptile project in Namibia.
The company reported that the resource extension drilling success at Tumas 1 East has produced an Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate of 24.8Mlb grading 319ppm eU3O8. This is a 34% increase in resource growth.
The company announced that the resources within the Tumas palaeochannel system is now 92.5Mlb at 303ppm eU3O8. This is a near three-fold increase since November 2016.
DYL said that the overall palaeochannel-related Mineral Resources across the Namibian project portfolio have more than doubled in size to 110.5Mlb at 290ppm eU3O8.
Deep Yellow reported that it continues to advance the project toward achieving its stated calcrete Mineral Resource target of 100M to 150Mlb at a grade range of 300ppm to 500ppm U3O8.
The company noted that the mineralisation is calcrete-associated and hosted in palaeochannels, similar to the Langer Heinrich uranium mine located 30km to the north-east.
DYL said that only 60% of the known palaeochannel system has been drilled, with 60km of this target still to be tested.
Reptile project
The Reptile Project is located in the Erongo Region of western Namibia. The project includes EPLs 3496 and 3497 covering 1,131km2 held by Deep Yellow’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Reptile Uranium Namibia (Pty) Ltd.
The project’s palaeochannel/calcrete-type uranium resource base includes the Tumas and Tubas deposits of 50.6Mlb at 370ppm U3O8 and the overlying Red Sands resource of 12.7Mlb at 170ppm U3O8.
The Tumas palaeochannel includes the Tumas 1E, 1, 2, 3, and Tubas Red Sands/calcrete deposits.
It may be noted that Palaeochannels filled by Cretaceous, Tertiary and Quaternary sediments are the targets for the Langer Heinrich style of uranium mineralisation.
Updated MRE from resource extension drilling
The company reported that the resource extension drilling at Tumas 1 East for an updated Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) has produced Inferred Mineral Resources of 24.8Mlb at 319ppm eU3O8, at a 200ppm eU3O8 cut-off.
The company said that the MRE was undertaken using various cut-off grades using a minimum thickness of 1m and conforms to the 2012 JORC Code of Mineral Resource Reporting.
DYL said that the upgraded MRE over the Tumas 1 East deposit, incorporating newly discovered tributaries, is the result of positive 2018 and 2019 drilling programs.
591 holes drilled
DYL said that resource extension RC drilling programs, carried out in April, July and August 2019, succeeded in closing off the Tributary 5 deposit. This work also included some limited infill drilling within the Tributary 4 channel.
The company said that of the total 591 RC holes drilled for 6,281m during the Tumas 1 East drilling campaigns, 291 holes returned positive results, with an overall success rate of 50%.
Encouraging resource growth
The company reported the resource extension drilling resulted in a 34% increase from the MRE of Tumas 1 East announced in March 2019.
The company said that the total combined measured, indicated and inferred calcrete resources in the Tumas palaeochannel (Tumas 1E,1, 2, 3 and Tubas Red Sands/calcrete deposits) now stand at 92.5Mlb at 303ppm eU3O8 over EPLs 3496/97.
The new MRE for the extended Tumas 1, 2 and 3 deposits at a 200ppm cut-off gives a combined Measured, Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource of 79.8Mlb at 347ppm eU3O8.
DYL said that when the Tubas Red Sands/calcrete and the Aussinanis deposits are included, this totals 110.5Mlb for all the palaeochannel-associated targets.
Majority still untested
Deep Yellow had identified 125km of highly prospective palaeochannel systems. To date, only 65km of these systems have been adequately tested, delivering an almost 3-fold increase in the resource base.
The company said that this provides Deep Yellow with a significant opportunity to increase the current resource base at Reptile through targeted exploration across the remaining 60km of channels yet to be tested.
DYL said that the extensive channel system occurring away from the identified deposits has only been sparsely drilled with large sections remaining completely untested.
Next steps
Deep Yellow announced that it continues to advance towards its stated Exploration Target of 100M to 150Mlb at a grade range of 300ppm to 500ppm U3O8 for this type of uranium mineralisation.
The company said that the current drilling program is now testing the Tubas calcrete resource west of Tumas Central. The first part of this drilling program is planned to be completed by early December with results expected to be reported in the January 2020 quarter.
Management comments
Deep Yellow Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, John Borshoff said: “We continue to successfully develop our Namibian project portfolio. Deep Yellow is focused on executing its unique and differentiated dual-pillar strategy, which includes building a project with significant size and scale in Namibia as a critical component of this strategy.
We are fortunate enough to have a proven and experienced management team that understand the requirements of building a successful uranium operation – a factor that will continue to contribute to the remarkable turnaround in improving the potential offered by the Reptile Project. This has already enabled us to triple the resource at Reptile in a short space of time, importantly at a discovery cost of around $0.11/lb.
Results to date strongly justify our increased effort both in exploration to further increase the resource base and in evaluating the economic potential of this project with the initiation of a Scoping Study due for completion in December 2019. We fully expect this to progress to commencement of a prefeasibility study in late January 2020”.
