Aura Resources’ first Mauritania uranium resource

THE DRILL SERGEANT: Australian-based uranium exploration company Aura Energy received a boost of confidence in its greenfields Reguibat project in Mauritania.

Aura has announced the project’s first JORC-Code compliant Inferred Resource of 50.2 million pounds at 330 parts per million of uranium.

The maiden resource for the Reguibat project was based on a cut-off grade of 100ppm uranium.

A total of 48.9 million pounds of this resource are contained in permits 100% held by Aura.
 
The Reguibat project comprises several, laterally extensive developments of calcrete uranium mineralisation in northern Mauritania.

Aura is confident this recent result confirms the area to now be a major emerging uranium province.

The resource was estimated from the combined results of two drilling program, the most recent being completed between November 2010 and February this year.

Drilling covered all of Aura’s wholly owned permits, as well as its joint venture permits, and totalled over 9,100 metres in 2,022 holes.

This new resource has Aura now holding a total of 348 mineral pounds of uranium in inferred resources across all of its projects on three continents, Africa, Europe, and Australia.
 
In its release to the Australian Securities Exchange, Aura declared the Reguibat resource to compare favourably in terms and grade a number of other calcrete uranium resources globally.
“Parts of the mineralised zones have higher grades than the global average,” the company said.

“Many drill holes with higher grade intercepts occur in coherent zones.

“Within Oued el Foule Est permit, for example, there are a number of elongate, high grade zones of between 100 and 400 metres width.
 
“Similar, spatially continuous, higher grade zones are observed at other prospects.”

Aura also highlighted a number of points it said demonstrates potential to substantially increase the resource, these include:

– Aura holds approximately 11,000 square kilometres in northern Mauritania in permits and applications;

– Many zones have mineralised drill holes on their margins which are open in at least one direction;

– Zones Ain Sder J and Central have mineralisation adjacent to extensive sand dune development, where it is inferred that mineralisation continues under these dunes;

– There is a substantial (1,700 by 700 metres) undrilled radiometric anomaly in the Ain Sder permit;

– Other radiometric anomalies have yet to be tested; and

– Aura holds 2,876 square kilometres in permit applications to the east of the Ain Sder permit that are considered prospective, but have never been radiometrically surveyed.