Member Info for KeithOz

BCB has just posted this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsceNyZFPvI&ab_channel=StockBox , Paul Johnson from POW talks today about KCB & Ditau from 3.20 - 4.15. Doesn't say much, but says intention to drill asap this year, so presumably before Kanye IPO. Another 3 parts to this series to come, so maybe more on Stockbox over the next few days.

JD - It's interesting that the Kanye comments by both KAV and POW have become increasingly vague. This could be because the size of the opportunities was not previously anticipated. I suspect discussions are ongoing as to how to maximise value - do you IPO before drilling, and use the funds raised to appraise the targets? Or do you find some money from somewhere to do some appraisal, hope it is positive, then raise a larger amount at IPO on the back of those results?

Other complications involve a possible drilling-for-shares package that Ben has already hinted at. Perhaps participation in the IPO by another Botswana-focussed miner, even as operator - Sandfire comes to mind. A longer shot is outright sale before IPO, could be plenty of big boys interested in a major Cu project. The fact that this is a joint venture, it will take longer for everyone to agree on strategy, particularly since the goal posts are constantly moving.

Imagine 3 dudes sitting round a campfire, deciding what to do tomorrow. Today you have just finished a 600m borehole in the desert. The other 2 are among the most respected geologists worldwide regarding what could be down that hole.

Scenario 1.
You found nothing interesting today, so you decide maybe it was just bad luck, and agree to move 1km away and drill into the same anomaly, which is going to take a month+ and use up $1m+, rather than moving on to somewhere else that the data suggests is better. or,

Scenario 2.
You found something very interesting, so agree to spend a month+ and $1m+ to drill the same anomaly 1km away to prove it wasn't just luck, but that the interesting something extends for over 1km.

Which is the more likely scenario?

Ella, essentially, yes. Our concept is that large accumulation of metal sulphides have pooled at the bottom of the gabbro keels, by way of the mechanism I outlined in my last post. The proof of that concept is finding such an orebody.

Commerciality will depend on the tenor - the concentration of valuable metals. There is an outside downside that it could all be pyrite (iron sulphide), which isn't much use. I would suspect the main metalliferous sulphide minerals will be pentlandite (Fe/Ni - 22% Ni) and chalcopyrite (35% Cu). Some Bornite (80% Cu) and Cuprite (89% Cu) would be nice as well. PGEs & Au are usually found as finely disseminated blobs within the rock.

I suspect the reason the share price has plummeted is that the lack of specific mineralisation info in the RNS. As well as the possibility that there isn't any, it is more likely that we simply don't know yet. I would much prefer to examine the freshly split surface of a core, rather than roughly drilled outside. Even then, it may be difficult to distinguish between different sulphide minerals visually. As i have said previously, if you want to guess the %age of PGEs visually, good luck with that.

I have a suspicion that there are very good reasons why not too much is being revealed at this stage - JORC-standard assays across 6 holes in 3 bodies will be a very valuable package - certainly worth a lot more than 6x the guess on one set of core.

For the many impatient folk here, suggest you re-read the H&P analysis published on the HE1 website yesterday. Paragraph 3 makes it pretty obvious that the company is currently in discussions about using a different or additional drilling rig. Those discussions would include possible payment in shares, and would require board approval of both companies, as well as finalising the logistics of getting all the necessary equipment and crews in the right places.

My very last words on this subject.
1. 3He has only theoretical use for one type of cold fusion. IF it works, 3He would only be required decades away, and is of no commercial relevance to Helium One.
2. Hot fusion using 1H, 2H or 3H will not produce He, so is not a competitor to Helium One.

You suggest that fusing Hydrogen makes Helium. Hydrogen is made up of one proton and one electron. Helium is made up of two protons, two neutrons and two electrons. Th rare isotope 3He has only one neutron. So it should be obvious that 2 x H will never = 1 x He.

Furthermore, what is described in the BBC release is hot fusion - basically an atomic bomb on a small scale. The potential use of 3He is in cold fusion - but this is still entirely theoretical, and extremely unlikely to be plumbed in to the grid within any of our lifetimes

Some clarification - We are looking for a very specific type of orebody - one where magma has passed though high sulphur-containing host rock, and the sulphur has combined with the widely dispersed Ni & Cu within that magma. In our case, the high-sulphur host rock is the coal seams that have been confirmed in the A2 drill hole. Ni & Cu will combine more readily with sulphur, and the resultant metal sulphides will sink to the bottom of the magma, since they are denser.

If there is no sulphur present, the metals will combine with the omnipresent silicon - metal silicates contain less metal per molecule than sulphides, so will not be denser than the surrounding magma, and will remain finely dispersed throughout the final rock type. These dispersed metal silicates will not be of economic importance.

By their very nature, the sulphide orebodies which we seek will be much higher in metal concentration, and it is relatively cheap & easy to extract pure metals from sulphides - definitely not the case with silicates.

Ella - the targets we have identified using TDEM should be predominantly massive sulphides, which means essentially they are entirely sulphide minerals - of which a small proportion will be the various Ni & Cu minerals. The high Siemens readings fits this model. Please remember these targets are of the order of 1000m x 1000m x 100m. I have previously given indicative models based on a very conservative 1% Ni, 1% Cu & 1g/t Pd. The actual deposits which we hope are similar to our targets, at for example Noril'sk-Tanakh & Voisey's Bay, are of much higher grade than my example - for all contained metals.
If you look at the Rockcliff example that you quoted, these are not massive sulphides, but narrow veins containing sulphide minerals which range in thickness from 2.4m to just 25cms. Rockcliff do not know the length or other extent of these veins. So, do you want to find a vein 25cms across, or a massive sulphide deposit of perhaps 100,000,000 cubic metres?
btw, the rather confusing Ni equivalent figure (Nieq) they use is arrived at by adding up the value of all the contained metals in the given section, then dividing that number by the price of Ni. Hope this helps - K

I think you need to cut the management some slack, they want to make the right decisions that benefit all stakeholders (not just shareholders), not a fast decision that might give day traders a temporary warm glow. Some of the things they may be considering:
Are the difficult ground conditions likely to be better at the other, shallower targets?
Is the current drill rig the best equipment given the likely conditions?
Do Mitchells have a more suitable rig available, if so, does the contract need to be amended?
Would different (slimline or in-string) logging equipment make life easier? If so, at what cost and is it available within a reasonable timeframe?
Should 3D seismic be done before further drills?
How can all these changes best be lined up, within budget, and taking account of the climate (rainy season) over the next few months?
A long shot at this stage - are there any other discussions with 3rd parties?
I don't believe there is anyone on this board who has the detailed on-the-ground knowledge to answer any one of these questions, let alone all of them. If you're feeling overly flustered & impatient, how about trying yoga :-)

Troll. Filtered.

I've listened to this very carefully, all the questions I had raised earlier today have been answered in a straightforward and positive manner. The only thing I can add: ignore the short-term ups & downs in the share price, the potential of this project will be fully revealed over time. I personally think that potential is huge, but we must be prepared to hang on until maybe around Christmas.

slowlyx2 - of course, First Equity & SI Capital are just KAV's brokers - I spend too much time looking at AIM cos!
It seems the market doesn't agree with my view - down 15% at the moment.

A few additional points, which maybe clarify some of the questions we have raised this morning. Although the release doesn't contain the positive detail we had hoped for, there may be good reason for this, and it could be completely incorrect to assume this hole "is a dud" as one of our contributors helpfully put it. I have now had a chance to revisit the important long video with slides that Ben did just before the start of drilling:

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1vAGRwwPPBDJl

XRF: 11.15 - "xrf analysis can be a little unreliable, whether or not we'll report the results I don't know, the really reliable data will come out of the assay labs. What we are keen to do at this point is make absolutely sure what we report to market is completely accurate"

Second hole in A2: 19.07 "Spectral geophysics recommended two holes ... it's possible we will drill two holes at this stage... but we've got to be mindful of our budgets"

Depth of 2nd A2 hole: 17.05 "the target sits just outside (i.e. below) the gabbro."

My considered view is that Ben is being very cautious in what he is revealing at this stage, indeed the NOMAD will insist on this in the RNS wording, particularly after the award of options a few days ago. The lack of XRF results is understandable, and was clearly considered several months ago. Re-read the second sentence from the first quote.
Also considered months ago was the second hole on A2 if successful with the first. TDEM is working at (or possibly beyond) its limit at 800m, so there may have been some discussion of how far and how deep the A2 target went, particularly in view of the comment that this target could be partially below the Karoo gabbro. If Spectral / Hillary think there is a good chance that this target extends downwards and to the west, especially if it rises from a feeder zone with richer mineralisation potential, then it seems a sensible decision to spend some of the money recently raised on investigating this.
"Sulphides" - I said in an earlier post I was a little disappointed that only "visible sulphides" was mentioned. I would like some clarification on this - were they disseminated or massive? What thickness? Any visually identifiable minerals? One possible upside is that they simply don't want to elaborate before assay results. 1% Ni is commercially interesting, but may not show up too well just by looking at the surface of a drill core. 1g/t Pd is even more commercially interesting (half the value of Noril'sk comes from Pd), but I defy anyone to identify that visually!

If the hole really was "a dud", then resources would be directed at target B (remember we are still awaiting further TDEM results from here) and then up to the KCB - not another half dozen expensive holes in the same place. I would personally want to get as many hard results (i.e. assays) in before I started trumpeting too loudly - the more info we have, the greater the value of the project to the potential acquirers.

Yes, D220, I thought it very interesting that instead of moving 2 target C as planned, they were essentially investigating the same target, but 1km away and deeper. I am unsure whether this is the same keel, but a deeper part of it, or else a different, deeper keel. You might want to go and take a look at Hillary Gumbo's detailed map of the A-C corridor, on which he had marked a number of potential feeder zones. These would, in simple terms, be the deep cracks through which a number of successive flows of magma have occurred. I recall some modelling of Noril'sk style deposits suggesting that feeder zones could be key positions for deposits of massive sulphides - maybe this is what they want to look at. TDEM is unlikely to give a clear picture of what is going on at that depth, so drilling is the only option. My only caveat is that the deeper you go, the more difficult and expensive the mining, however Noril'sk-Tanakh are block caving right down to 1500m, so it's not impossible.
I have to get the kids' dinner now, will come back in a couple of hours for a more detailed look at all the info - and of course check the share price! Enjoy your breakfasts :-)

I would have liked to have seen "massive sulphides were observed between 350m and 470m, total thickness 120m", rather than just "Visual inspection of cores confirms presence of sulphides". Hopefully we can get some expanded info from BT in the various chats & videos that will come out this week.

Sorry for the double post, don't know how that happened. No mention of hand-held xrf, but the decision to immediately expand the drill campaign and drill even deeper on the same corridor says things must be looking good.

Hole TA2DD002:

- Located 1km west of Hole TA2DD001

- Hole to test deeper Karoo gabbro "keel" (est. up to 800m), believed to be connected to the same gabbro encountered at Hole TA2DD001

- Additional objective is to test potential contact between Karoo and Proterozoic gabbros, which might represent a possible volcanic 'feeder' zone

- Hole to target the same >1km geophysical anomaly drilled at Hole TA2DD001 (announced 20 April 2021)

Further expansion of the Campaign:

- Up to six boreholes now planned in the Campaign, targeting Target Areas A and C (the "A-C Corridor") and Target Area B

- Immediate mobilisation of rig to site of Hole TA2DD002 in Target Area A

- On completion of Hole TA2DD002, rig to mobilise to Target Area B to drill the Company's primary exploration target ("Target B1", announced 2 July 2021)

Further expansion of the Campaign:

- Up to six boreholes now planned in the Campaign, targeting Target Areas A and C (the "A-C Corridor") and Target Area B

- Immediate mobilisation of rig to site of Hole TA2DD002 in Target Area A

- On completion of Hole TA2DD002, rig to mobilise to Target Area B to drill the Company's primary exploration target ("Target B1", announced 2 July 2021)