Moab Minerals (ASX:MOM) is expanding its Manyoni Uranium Project in Tanzania through a binding agreement to purchase four additional prospecting licences from AuKing Mining (ASX:AKN) at a cost of $175,000.
Subject to an asset sale and purchase agreement between both companies, Moab Minerals will complete a 30-day due diligence period from the date of executing a sale agreement. AuKing will also provide Moab with access to all information within its control.
Other matters that are required to complete the sale agreement include securing ministerial approval for the transfers, and if required, approval from the Fair Competition Council of Tanzania.
Moab says the new tenements, which total 488km2, are considered ‘strategic’ as they cover parts of the historic Manyoni Project held by Uranex (ASX:UNX) prior to 2013. As such, the deal represents the consolidation of all the Manyoni Uranium deposits for the first time in over 10 years.
Managing Director Malcolm Day says he visited the project last week to see the beginning of a drilling program.
“The program is expected to run over the next few months with most of the assay results available in November/December,” he says.
“The acquisition of these additional surrounding tenements, which contain three uranium mineral resources known as E, F, and G, estimated by Uranex resources in 2010 as part of Uranex’s Manyoni Uranium Project, adds significant upside potential to Manyoni.
“We’ll now look at expanding the current drill program to evaluate the resource potential of these new tenements.”
The historic resource estimate for Uranex’s Manyoni Project totals 28 million tonnes in the inferred resource category at 140 parts per million for 8.3 million pounds of contained triuranium octoxide.
Moab is also planning to conduct an exploration drilling program that is designed to locate extensions to the known mineralisation. The company says this will be aided by ground geophysical surveys aimed at locating buried alluvial channels and concealed faults.
Airborne geophysical data has also been acquired by the company from the Geological Survey of Tanzania, which will support exploration targeting work.
The Manyoni Project lies in the Republic of Tanzania, Africa. The tenements being purchased are located in the central part of the Tanzanian Archaean Shield, which is a stable platform of granite-gneiss terrane with marginal greenstone belts.
Moab Minerals is an explorer and project developer focused on its uranium, vanadium, copper, and cobalt projects in Tanzania, Australia, and the US.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Moab Minerals
