www.marenicaenergy.com.au
Marenica Energy's (ASX: MEY) strategy is to focus on the evaluation of the Marenica Project as well as to identify and acquire other uranium opportunities globally.
The Company's principal asset is the Marenica Uranium Project located in the uranium rich Damara Province in Namibia. The project covers 527sq km, with high prospectivity for both secondary and primary uranium deposits.
Marenica Energy identifies optimal development process for Marenica Uranium Project
Marenica Energy (ASX: MEY) has identified the opportunity to develop the Marenica Uranium Project as a bulk-tonnage heap leach operation after receiving preliminary results from a Scoping Study, and plans to upgrade its exploration program.
The Study had intended to develop the project as a continuous agitated leach circuit fed by higher grade stock. However, the scoping work has indicated that a heap leach operation shows positive economics and is likely to deliver far superior financial returns.
Marenica has decided to undertake further work to more fully assess a heap leach operation. This will involve additional metallurgical test work across a broader run-ofmine samples to confirm the use of heap leach technology in a bulk ore scenario, given there is a large tonnage of low grade mineralisation available above the lower cut of 50ppm U3O8.
The metallurgical work will involve a series of agglomeration and column leach tests that will take several months and these tests are planned to commence in August.
The additional exploration and metallurgical testwork will be conducted to a level necessary to move to a Prefeasibility Study and all the components of the present Study will also be upgraded to this level.
The company said the proposed mining methods have only focused on truck and excavator mining and further mining studies with emphasis on bulk methods may improve economics.
The initial environmental investigations show there are no major environmental issues.
In conjunction with this metallurgical work, Marenica will upgrade and extend its exploration program to maximise the resource available for a larger bulk tonnage project.
Marenica has defined three exploration target areas with the potential to add substantial additional resources of contained U3O8.
Marenica said it is confident that the Marenica project exploration targets could deliver a further 100 to 150 million tonnes at a grade of 140ppm to 180ppm U3O8 in adjacent exploration areas.
John Young, chief executive, said the process would involve increasing the resource base, refining cost estimates, confirming infrastructure contracts for key items and optimizing the metallurgical process.
The economic potential of the project can be enhanced, lower capital and operating costs and by an increased annual production and minelife.
“The Study to date has shown that additional time spent on increasing the project resource base and providing further confidence in the optimal process route should add substantially to the economics and financial outcome of the Project,” Young added.
