BHR.L Regulatory News (BHR)

22 Jan 2007 07:01

Carnegie Minerals plc22 January 2007 22 January 2007 Carnegie Minerals Plc ("Carnegie") Carnegie contracts Wallis Drilling for drill programme in Senegal Carnegie Minerals (CME), the Mineral Sands resources company with productioninterests in The Gambia and an exploration permit in adjoining Senegal, ispleased to announce that it has contracted the Australian company WallisDrilling, to undertake a substantial drilling programme on its Senegaleseassets. Highlights: •A minimum of 8,000 line metres of air core drilling in the Casamance province of Senegal. •Drilling will test the numerous targets generated by the high resolution, low level airborne geophysical survey flown over the entire Senegal licence area in late 2006, which adjoin the Company's mineral sands production assets in The Gambia. •Programme expected to commence in March 2007. The airborne geophysical programme identified numerous linear and curvilinearmagnetic features interpreted by specialised data processing as well as somecorrelating radiometric features. Such geophysical anomalies can be associatedwith buried strandline and surface dune accumulations of heavy minerals thatinclude some magnetic as well as thorium/uranium containing minerals. This isthe first time such modern exploration techniques have been applied to thisarea. The drilling programme seeks extensions of the mineral sands deposit alreadydiscovered in the northern portion of the licence area at Niafarang where infilldrilling was completed in December 2006. The Niafarang drilling samples have nowbeen received at independent Perth laboratories for assaying and CME expect theNiafarang computer modelling and resource estimate to be available in April2007. Alan Hopkins, MD of Carnegie said: "The results from the geophysical airborne survey were extremely encouraging andwe are very pleased to have signed up a drilling contractor on schedule. "We are on track with the testing of these large mineral sands targets inSenegal which lie to the south of our mining operations in The Gambia and withina very short time we should be able to advise the market on the extent andnature of this mineral sands province." - Ends - For further information, call: Alan Hopkins, Managing Director, Carnegie Minerals Plc 020 7831 3113John Prior, Romil Patel Corporate Synergy Plc 020 7448 4414Billy Clegg/Edward Westropp, Financial Dynamics 020 7831 3113 Notes to editors: Carnegie only listed on AIM in August 2006 and in addition to the rapidexploration programme being undertaken in southern Senegal, it has alreadyadvanced the first Niafarang prospect to a resource estimate stage whileprogressing its emerging production capability in The Gambia. All exploration in Senegal is 50% co funded by Astron Ltd (the largestindependent buyer of zircon in China), with the emerging production in TheGambia fully funded by Astron Ltd. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange