The Directors of Gippsland have reported that the company's 50 percent-owned joint venture company Tantalum Egypt has been granted an exploration license over a 16 square kilometer area of land in Egypt, which includes the 82 million ton Nuweibi tantalum-feldspar deposit.
The Nuweibi deposit is located 15 kilometers from the 40 million ton Abu Dabbab tantalum-feldspar project, also owned by Tantalum Egypt. The granting of the license gives Tantalum Egypt the sole right to convert the permit into a mining authorization at any time during the four-year life of the agreement.
The Nuweibi deposit was discovered during the 1970s by joint Egyptian-Soviet geological expeditions whose members subsequently explored the deposit in detail. The deposit is comprised of tantalum-niobium-tin mineralization within a porphyritic microcline-quartz-albite granite. There has been extensive exploration completed on the area including 23 diamond drill holes totaling 2,746 meters, trenching, surface sampling and metallurgical testwork.
As a result of this exploration it was determined that the Nuweibi deposit contains 82 metric tons at a grade of 156 g/t tantalum pentoxide at a cut-off of 120 g/t. Gippsland is presently undertaking a review of all available Nuweibi data with the view to converting the Soviet resource figures to JORC Code compliant resources.
During March 2003, the international engineering group Lycopodium undertook a scoping study which determined an Abu Dabbab Project NPV of $127.1 million at a six percent discount rate and an operating margin of $346 million during the first 21 years of the 40 year mine life. The use of the one processing plant for both the Abu Dabbab and Nuweibi deposits is expected to greatly enhance the project's economics.
The Egyptian incorporated company Tantalum Egypt is owned equally by Gippsland and the state-run Egyptian Geological Survey & Mining Authority. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
