Mauritania Projects

On the 8 November 2006 the Company announced a strategic investment in uranium exploration by the way of a 50% interest in a private mineral exploration company, Mauritania Ventures Limited. The aim of this company is to investigate the uranium and iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) potential of Mauritania, northwest Africa.

Mauritania Ventures currently hold seven uranium exploration licences, totaling 10,440 km2, in northern Mauritania. These licences were acquired to target three types of uranium mineralization, i.e., unconformity-type, granite-hosted and calcrete/silicrete-hosted. An additional five permits in the south of the country for IOCG style mineralization are also under application.

Uranium (north) and IOCG (south) prospecting in northern Mauritania

The Company's technical staff considered that all of the northern permits to be highly prospective for unconformity-type uranium mineralization analogous to that seen in the Athabasca region of Canada. Examples of this type of mineralization are McArthur River and Rabbit Lake (Saskatchewan, Canada) and the Ranger III and Jabilunka II deposits (Northern Territory, Australia). The permits cover significant areas of an unconformable contact between early Proterozoic reworked granitic terrane and overlying sediments of late Proterozoic to Carboniferous age. Airborne geophysics, flown on behalf of the Mauritanian Government, reveal radiometric anomalies within a mapped, organic-rich unit near the base of this sedimentary sequence and coincident with its intersection of large, deep-penetrating crustal shear structures. Uranium mineralization is known to the north and northwest of the permit area, hosted in granites and rhyolites cut by these shear structures.

Uranium prospecting in northern Mauritania