The Nachingwea nickel sulphide project about 400 km south of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, contains an estimated 89 million pounds of nickel, Continental Nickel (CNI-V) says.
Continental owns 70% of the project in a joint-venture with IMX Resources (IXR-A) of Australia, which holds the remaining 30%.
Measured and indicated resources reached 3.08 million tonnes grading 1.31% nickel, 0.24% copper and 0.04% cobalt at a net smelter return cut-off of US$23 per tonne.
At a higher NSR cut-off of US$100 per tonne, measured and indicated resources totaled 1.14 million tonnes grading 2.43% nickel, 0.40% copper and 0.06% cobalt.
The resource estimate is the project’s first, and was based on 179 drill holes totaling 26,981 metres. Mineral resources stem from six separate, near surface, sulphide zones (G, H, J, L, M and NAD013) discovered at Ntaka Hill from 2006 to 2007 and delineated in 2008 were used for the calculation.
In most of the zones the mineralization extends below the bottom of the preliminary pit shells and several zones, including M, L and G, are open up plunge.
More drilling is needed to determine whether additional near surface resources exist, but funding shouldn’t be a issue. The company has about $11.7 million in its treasury.
This year Continental is undertaking a $2.5 million exploration program and will focus on evaluating a number of high-priority regional target areas identified from the airborne VTEM survey of 2007-2008.
To date about twenty-eight anomalies have been identified for further work. Geologic mapping, geochemical sampling and ground TDEM geophysical surveys are scheduled to be completed by September when a 3,000 metre
diamond drill program is scheduled to begin.
Nachingwea lies within the Proterozoic Mozambique belt to the southeast of the Archean Tanzanian Craton and is underlain by a mixture of mafic to felsic granulites, gneisses, amphibolites and metasedimentary rocks that have been intruded by young ultramafic to felsic intrusions.
IMX Resources made the greenfield discovery in 2006. Inco was the first company to explore for nickel in the area as early as the 1950s.
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