Globe on the ball for uranium

13 Dec 2006

Mining News

INITIAL ground follow-up work at Globe Uranium's Livingstonia property in northern Malawi has returned significant widths of uranium values from three of its airborne radiometric anomalies.

Rock-chip sampling at the Chombe anomaly returned "highly encouraging" results with the entire 24-metre sampled length averaging 127 parts per million uranium, with the central zone returning 11m at 226ppm uranium including 1m at 410ppm. Globe said the results were particularly pleasing, considering that "tropical weathering rapidly leaches uranium from surface outcrop and produces disequilibrium conditions" which the company said was similar to Paladin Resources' Kayelekera deposit.

Paladin's deposit has a reported mineral resource of 15,650 tonnes of uranium oxide at 0.084% and is less than 90km away from Chombe,
and Globe said the "extensive surface expression of anomalous uranium at Chombe is larger than that originally reported" for Kayelekera.

Additionally at Chombe, uranium was identified in "multiple, stacked, altered horizons" over a 1.2km strike length with a peak rock-chip sample of 357ppm uranium. Over at Globe's Chiweta anomaly, located along a cliff face, two out of five rock-chip grab sample returned 335ppm and 238ppm uranium, which confirmed "the strong uranium channel radiometer anomalism".

Meanwhile at the Bunga anomaly, soil and rock-chip sampling programs were completed in most of the area. "Although the central part of the [Bunga] airborne uranium anomaly may not have been located, rock-chip grab samples returned a local high of 361ppm uranium," Globe said.

"Uranium in soil anomalism returned from wide-spaced sampling indicates the presence of uranium near surface despite the presence of extensive tropical weathering."

The company plans to drill test Chombe, Chiweta and Bunga as soon as the country's wet season is over, which will be in the first quarter of next year.
Shares in Globe were unchanged at 85c in afternoon trading yesterday on the news and were trading at 80c this morning.