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Teeling firm survey for Botswana diamond

Tuesday, May 29 10:23:31

Botswana Diamonds, the John Teeling owned Irish AIM listed diamond exploration firm, will apply the latest geophysics technology to identify diamond targets on a newly awarded prospecting licence in the Orapa region of Botswana.

The new licence which covers an area of 262.6 square kilometres is100pc held by Atlas Minerals, a wholly owned subsidiary of Botswana Diamonds. The licence has been awarded for an initial period of three years after which it can be renewed for two additional periods of two years each.

The prospecting license lies 70km to the southeast of Debswana's Orapa Mine but is still considered to be part of the Orapa kimberlite cluster. The license lies on the highly prospective but lightly explored Kaapvaal craton.

The initial work will be high resolution geophysics over targeted areas followed by percussion drilling of identified anomalies. This license area is characterised by a northward protruding tongue of thick Kalahari cover, up to 60 metres deep, in which discovery techniques used to date may have been less effective.

"We are very pleased with this award. This is a highly prospective licence which is under explored. The sand cover of 30 to 60 metres has meant that exploration techniques used until now, particularly soil sampling, have not been effective. The area shares similar characteristics with the area around the Gope mine development of Gem Diamonds and the X36 project of Petra Diamonds. New high resolution geophysics using airborne magnetics will be used to identify drilling targets," said Mr Teeling.