Amur Minerals Corporation (LON:AMC) Chief Executive Officer Robin Young caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss their latest drilling update
Q1: Now Amur Minerals Corporation put out a drilling update this morning which looks to be progressing well. You started earlier and your drilling faster than you thought you would, when do you expect drilling to be finished?
A1: Well, we’re intending to continue along to the completion of 15,000 metres and by starting a month early we may complete a month earlier which would be in September instead of the typical ending of say mid-October through the end of the month. So this full month head start has been very beneficial and if we still have additional fuel at the end of the summer campaign, and the weather’s working with us, we’ll continue to add additional drill metres. I just want to also note that the drill crews performed on a really stellar basis and they’ve been doing a fantastic job for us and I just want to caution everybody that we’ve not had any mechanical failures or severe weather conditions or anything that have precluded us, we’ve been running really at a top performance since we’ve begun this programme. We’re already at 7,500 metres and we only planned to be at about 3,000 and on a record basis we’re already blowing the historical record out of the water where we only drilled 7,200 metres in 2012, our best year.
Q2: So what are the objectives for the programme and how are you progressing?
A2: We’re doing fairly well on objectives and we can divide it up into basically 4 categories. We had a very small limited start-up portion of the programme where we went out and drill something that was already indicated and we just wanted to make sure that any new increase in drill density would not change the configuration of the mineralisation so that programme was completed and it gives us a great deal of assurance that what we’ve interpreted in the other resource models is going to hold together. The second item is the conversion of resource which is basically changing existing inferred resource to that of indicated, this is important because what indicated is it provides us with a basis of the generation of reserves so any indicated resources is very valuable to us. We also have an expansion programme on the resource and this year we have been a bit surprised, I’ll elaborate more on it in a little bit, but we hope to continue expanding and finding out just how big this licence area really is and the deposits that are contained within. We also are undertaking a metallurgical drill programme where we’re drilling cores for the compilation of a large metallurgical sample which we can then use to define flow sheets, plant designs and also to move forward to the consideration of the furnace designs where we would smelter on low grade our product to generate a low grade map. So these are all 4 very keen objectives that we’re advancing on and we’ve divided the project area into 3 areas, Area A, B and C, starting at the western most limit and working our way along the strike of the licence from the exploration boundary on the west end all the way through to the Flangovy area which we drilled last year.
Q3: At the end of the 15,000 metre programme what will have been accomplished?
A3: What we’re going to have done is we’re going to have to find a fully indicated resource or the entire length of the deposit from the west end where the licence limits terminate our property rights all the way through to as far eastward as possible which is projected to be the area where we had completed our step-out drilling last year. So we anticipate that we can have a resource, an indicated resource, over the strike length of approximately 2.5 kilometres, the advantage this provides us with is we don’t have to go back for any drilling to create any resources and reserves, we’ll know that extent, we may have to go back and drill some additional geotechnical holes for mine slope determination and underground structures that we would have to consider during the mining phase so the conversion of these inferred resources is very important to us, to have them at an indicated thickness, our indicated category is very good. What we are noticing in the inferred resource that we drilled this year so far in Area A they seem to be much thicker, they’re at least 50% thicker, and they’re higher grades than we originally thought so it’s amore quickactive effect on the resource in that area that we’ve drilled, especially in Area A, we don’t know if that’s what will happen in Area C when we approach that but we are advancing fairly well. We had not really anticipated that we would be as successful in step-out drilling on the west end of the licence, there’s a fault there and the geologic rock type really changes across that fault and the rock type on the west side of the fault indicates that there’s not supposed to be any mineralisation, however at this point in time the drilling has proven that it extends for another 400 metres to the west and we do know that eventually we will be encountering the rock type that terminates it. We have extended it and it’s a great addition and benefit that we had not expected at all.
Q4: So how significant are the results on drilling Area A and what will be the impact on Kun-Manie?
A4: They’re pretty extensive. What we have done is we’ve done a lot of technical work which is really the drilling of the metallurgical samples which we now have in storage and we’ll ship out at the end of the summer. The infill drilling that we have done on the inferred resource is substantial, I mentioned it a little bit earlier, what we’re seeing is that the grades are much higher in this inferred structure that had been estimated by SRK Consulting in the past, the primary reason is that the higher grade pipe it was extended through the structure where we hadn’t anticipated it being before. So the significance of this pipe being present is that we will see thicknesses that will approach 30 metres and be much higher in grade so our resource rework in this area should expand the indicated resource that will be derived from this as we have drilled on a much tighter grid. The step-out area where we are not defining new mineral for the 400 metres, we’re drilling this today at a density so that we can determine that it’s indicated resource as well. So by the end of this programme for Area A what we’ll have is we’ll have completed drilled out the area and not have to revisit it and that’s a key objective for us because logistically it’s challenging to support drill rigs located in multiple locations so this will allow us to focus and continue to advance in an eastward direction through the metallurgical programme in Area B and continue on to resource expansion and resource conversion in Area C so it all bodes well for additional to the DFS increasing in resources, reserves and developing metallurgical flow sheets.
