West Perth-based uranium explorer WildHorse Energy Ltd has been granted a 3,500 sqkm concession in Paraguay, setting up an opportunity to establish a major new uranium province, the company has announced.
West Perth-based uranium explorer WildHorse Energy Ltd has been granted a 3,500 sqkm concession in Paraguay, setting up an opportunity to establish a major new uranium province, the company has announced.
The full text of a company announcement is pasted below
WildHorse Energy Limited (ASX:WHE) has been awarded a concession covering 3,500km2 (865,000 acres) in the Parana Basin, Paraguay, granting the company the rights to immediately commence a planned exploration programme.
The concessions contain known uranium mineralisation, based on historical exploration.
Subject to the successful completion of exploration, WildHorse has the right to convert its concession to a mining permit.
WildHorse Managing Director, Mr Richard Pearce said the Company had pursued the Paraguayan asset because, like its other assets in the US and Hungary, it is a substantial set of projects with extensive drilling and other data.
The region of South America also has a history of uranium mine operation (refer figure 1), with established mines in nearby regions of Brazil and Argentina, and a nuclear power industry that is Figure 1: WildHorse's Paraguay project location set to expand rapidly. Company's such as Cue Capital (TSX:CUE) and Crescent Resources (TSX:CRC) are already active in Paraguay and Globe Uranium and Mega Uranium have extensive exploration programs in Argentina in the same geological region.
Mr Pearce said over the next six months the company would evaluate the extensive historical data on its new Paraguayan concession. "From this review, we aim to evaluate several potential targets, each with significant potential," Mr Pearce said.
"This is a further step forward for WildHorse, and will complement our developing projects in Europe and US as part of our expanding global footprint," Mr Pearce said
From 1978 until 1981, a private Denver based, American company, Anschutz acquired the exploration rights to the eastern third of Paraguay for the purpose of exploration for sedimentary hosted uranium deposits. Anschutz selected the huge Parana Basin of Paraguay as it had the same characteristics as Wyoming's uranium bearing basins, where WildHorse has its advanced projects at Sweetwater and Bison Basin. These sedimentary basin environments are favourable for roll front deposits. Wyoming has produced approximately 190 million pounds of uranium since the late 1950's and still has substantial reserves of hundreds of millions of pounds.
In a Joint Venture with Korea Electric Company (KECO), Anschutz carried out a three year exploration program, including 42,000 metres of drilling. This program comprised extensive field work, including geochemical and geophysical analysis. It identified redox fronts and finally, after spending in the order of US$25 million over three years, Anschutz identified an area with the potential to host a brand new uranium province with the possibility of containing several, 20 million pound roll front style deposits.
Anschutz completed a total of 34,015 metres of rotary drilling and 1,883 metres of core drilling in 1981. According to the "Annual Summary of Exploration Operations" prepared by Anschutz, further drilling in 1982 defined several roll fronts across extended distance. Anschutz's program targeted between 15 and 20 million pounds of U308 for each roll front, with grades ranging from 0.05%.to 0.14% U3O8.3 WildHorse has been able to licence this area and believes it has an excellent opportunity to develop a new uranium province in the Paraguayan segment of the Parana Basin.
WildHorse is in the process of reviewing the historical data with a view to identifying targets for resource definition drilling.
The eastern third of Paraguay is underlain by the western margin of the 1.2 million km2 Parana Basin. The majority of the Parana Basin is located in eastern Brazil and extends southerly into Argentina and Uruguay. Parana is a north-south trending intracratonic basin. The principal target for uranium is the Upper Permo-Carboniferous Independencia Formation in the Basin. The units consist of marine and marginal marine sandstones, shales and conglomerate. Prominent air-radiometric trends, soil and water anomalies occur in these units. Similar rock units on the eastern margin of the Parana Basin, in Brazil, contain uranium resources near the town of Amoranopolis. Younger sedimentary rocks are widespread throughout the old Anschutz concession. These are similar to the aeolian sandstones of Argentina where, at Serra Pintada, a uranium mine produced 2,300 tonnes (5 million lbs) of U3O8 from 1974 through 1986 and has remaining resources of 9,200 tonnes (20 million lbs) U3O8. The ore grade of that mine is 0.12% U3O8 (CNEA4 Report January 2006).
According to a report completed by Nuclear Assurance Corp for KECO, the geologic setting and characteristics of the Independencia Formation meets all the requirements for a roll front ore body:
- sedimentary host rock derived from granitic sources;
- sedimentary hosts are seen in an on-lap position to the source area;
- reducing agents in the form of dead oil, pyrobitumens, are common;
- oxidized continental sandstones are converted to a reduced state;
- mineralized ground and surface waters flowed thru permeable strata; and
- mechanical trapping mechanisms occur at "shale-outs".
Importantly, the potential quantities and grades of mineralisation contained in this summary are conceptual in nature, and there has been insufficient exploration to define a Mineral Resource. It is uncertain whether further exploration will result in the determination of a Mineral Resource. This previous work identified mineralisation that was defined using a classification system that does not comply with JORC Code, and as such cannot be relied upon to estimate current mineralisation.
