Tsumkwe Diamond Project
Location: Ngamiland, Tsumkwe, Namibia
Owner: Mount Burgess Mining NL 90%, Kimberlite Resources (Pty) Ltd 10%
Project Location
The Tsumkwe Diamond Project is located on the north-eastern border of Namibia adjacent to the Kihabe Base Metals Project. The project surrounds the small town of Tsumkwe and covers an area of 6700km2 under 10 Exclusive Prospecting Licenses, seven of which are in Joint Venture with Kimberlite Resources (Pty) Ltd.
Regional Geology
The Tsumkwe Diamond Project is underlain by a variety of basement lithologies of Proterozoic and unknown granite-gneiss belts of pre-Damaran and Damaran age. The tenements are almost entirely covered with a veneer of Kalahari sands.
The Company believes the Tsumkwe Diamond Project has many attributes suitable for discovery of kimberlite diatremes, which may host economic concentrations of diamonds, for the following reasons;
- The Company has interpreted that the Project overlies the southern margin of the Congo-Angolan Cratonic roots, which provides the necessary deep cool mantle, suitable for generating kimberlites from within the diamond stability field
- The project is situated south of the Trans-African Limpopo-Botswana Dyke Swarm, at a distance equivalent to the Orapa-Lethlakane Kimberlite Province in neighbouring Botswana
- There is evidence of a long-lived, stable basement high composed of Pre-Damaran Orogeny aged granite-gneiss which has been dated at >2,000Ma
- Situated just south of the Sikeretti Kimberlites and south-west of the Nxau-Nxau kimberlite field in Botswana
- Non-diamondiferous kimberlites (Gura Kimberlites) have been discovered on the Company’s tenements
Exploration to Date
Exploration by the Company to date has involved collection of 3700 loam samples, which were processed for kimberlitic indicator minerals. In areas of deeper Kalahari sand cover the Company has drilled over 51,100m of percussion drilling to sample the base of Kalahari interval for indicator minerals.
The basement and loam samples have generated several distinct basement indicator mineral anomalies. These indicator minerals include 8 macrodiamonds and significant numbers of G9 and G10 kimberlitic garnets, occurring in distinct clusters.
The Company believes that the freshness and un-rounded state of some of these G9 and G10 garnets is indicative of a short transport distance in the regolith and, thus, these indicator mineral anomalies are in close proximity to as yet undiscovered kimberlitic sources.
Exploration Model
The Company believes that the known kimberlitic indicator anomalies can be constrained to discrete palaeosurface domains defined by a series of subtle extensional half-grabens filled by the Kalahari Sands and bounded by listric extension faults.
It is the interpretation of the Company that these listric faults bounding the sediment-filled grabens represent zones of transcrustal weakness providing conduits for kimberlitic intrusives. As such, the Company’s focus for ongoing exploration is to define the relationship of indicator mineral anomalies to the palaeosurface and to nearby fault domains and grabens, and to back-trace the source of the indicator minerals to kimberlite intrusions.
Initial success of this model has been the discovery of the non-diamondiferous Gura Kimberlites, and the Company believes that the presence of macrodiamonds infers that local kimberlitic sources aside from the Gura Kimberlites are likely to exist, with potential to be diamondiferous.
Further Exploration
The forward program to assess the diamond potential of the Tsumkwe Diamond Project revolves around;
- Better imaging the palaeosurface and basement contours of the extensional half-grabens via magnetics, drill testing and gravity surveys to refine transport directions for kimberlitic indicator mineral anomalies
- Refining and infilling loam sampling around kimberlitic indicator anomalies to better constrain source and transport direction
- Targeted ground magnetic and gravity surveys over the upland sources of kimberlitic indicator mineral anomalies
- Drilling of discrete magnetic targets in the upland sources of indicator mineral anomalies
