Kavango Resources PLC (LON:KAV) has announced the results of the recent drilling programme on its Kalahari Suture Zone (KSZ) project in Botswana.
Kavango said the programme had provided valuable geological information to management to assist in the understanding of the potential of the KSZ to host large copper-nickel (Cu-Ni) mineral deposits.
The company said that the test results show elevated copper and nickel values compared to what might be expected in non-mineralised gabbro (a coarse-grained igneous rock).
What was not confirmed was the ability of Kavango's CSAMT geophysical system to identify massive sulphide bodies associated with the gabbro sills. This is almost certainly due to the presence of ground water contaminated with salt in and around the gabbroic intrusions, the company said.
Geophysical consultants have now advised Kavango that the use of down-hole electromagnetic surveying and/or the use of much more powerful transmitters from surface should be employed to discriminate between the mildly conductive salty water and the much more conductive massive sulphide mineralisation.
Three gabbro sills were intersected and analysed during the programme; the peak values were 415 parts per million nickel and 189 parts per million copper.
"There is now a large body of evidence suggesting that the accumulation of nickel and copper-bearing metal sulphides occurred within the high-level gabbroic intrusions of the KSZ,” said Michael Foster, the chief executive of Kavango Resources.
“The 3-D modelling of the geological information obtained from the drilling, together with all the geophysical surveys that have been completed, is providing Kavango with much valuable information concerning the genesis of the intrusives, the mechanisms of magma transport and the chemistry of the magma itself. The next stage is to identify and assess the value of these metal sulphide accumulations," he added.