Alba Mineral Resources plc (LON:ALBA) Chief Executive Officer Mike Nott caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss the EM survey at their Amitsoq project and what investors can expect over the coming months
Q1: Now Mike, you had some interesting news just out about the start of an EM survey over your Amitsoq project, can you talk us through the highlights?
A1: Yes, we announced today that we’ve commissioned, and the company has already started mobilising the various equipment they need, to conduct an electromagnetic and magnetic survey. In fact over our Amitsoq project, or at least the major parts of it which is in southern Greenland, our objective in commissioning this survey is to seek, to prove up, the continuity of known graphite deposits and occurrences on the southern part of the island of Amitsoq.
There is a former graphite mine that was worked between about 1915-1922, we hope to be able to use this information to prove the continuity of the deposit both along strike and also at depth, the type of survey equipment that we will be using has a target penetration of about 400 metres so it’s quite a strong and good piece of equipment. It’s not just the graphite down there that we’re going to be targeting, there are some known nickel and the platinum group element targets that have been identified from previous geological work on the island of Amitsoq, we are also going to be targeting those.
On the southern part of the licence area, not on Amitsoq island but near the town of Nanortalik, we have identified 2 potential gold targets from both remote sensing and geological interpretation. Both of these targets are along strike from a known gold deposit that’s well recorded in the geological literature so we’re hoping that those 2 additional targets will add more interest to our project in Greenland and certainly are 2 interesting targets for us. The reason for doing all of this is just to seek to try to do all we can to fast track this graphite project we have in southern Greenland towards some sort of a production-producing, revenue-producing facility.
Q2: OK, so you’re obviously very busy but what can investors expect to see or hear from Alba Mineral Resources in terms of news flow over the coming months?
A2: Well, let me carry on about Amitsoq just for a short time. They can expect obviously for us to be announcing results from the electromagnetic survey we’re doing in terms of both the graphite continuations along strike and at depth, about the results from the 2 gold targets we’ve identified and the results from the platinum group elements and nickel targets we’ve identified in the mid part of the island of Amitsoq.
In addition to that, we’ve announced previously, we’ve collected significant amounts now of bulk samples from the old graphite mine at Amitsoq and we are going through the process of identifying a metallurgical test facility and laboratory to do metallurgical testing of those samples. So certainly into the near future people can start expecting metallurgical test results and electromagnetic and magnetic geophysical survey results from this project that will sort of help us climb the development ladder with that project.
Our other 2 main projects are the oil projects we have as part of a consortium down in Surrey, part of the weald basin in Surrey. The main larger focus is Horse Hill where Horse Hill Developments Limited, who are the operator of the project down there, are still undergoing and going through the planning and the licensing and the permitting process which will certainly take, we believe, the rest of this year to come to completion. The second project we have down there is at Brockham, which is 6 miles to the north-west of Horse Hill, again we are going through a permitting of licensing there. We expect later this year, early into next year, to be able to drill a sidetrack well to go down through the Portland’s known reservoir where oil has previously been discovered, and in fact it has a production licence on it, to try to increase the production that we are getting from that sidetrack well. So that’s where we are and that’s what we’re hoping to do into the coming months and into early next year.
