News

January 15, 2008

Maghreb Minerals Gets A Lucky Break

By Rob Davies

Going over old assays is not usually a very exciting exercise. It has, nevertheless, become quite common these days as old data has to be re-assessed so that ore resource statements can be brought up to the new standards required by JORC or NI 43-101. However Gordon Riddler, the executive chairman of Maghreb Minerals, is enthusiastic about the potential of re-assaying old core from its Gite de l’Est property in northern Tunisia. Verification drilling at this property has delivered an audited inferred ore resource of 8.8 million tonnes at a grade of 3.16% combined lead and zinc. This is a big increase on the previous figure of 5.1 million tonnes at 3.76% Zn and 1.38% Pb.

In the course of making the new calculations it became clear to Gordon and his team that the previous assays had systematically under-reported the zinc content. He believes this was because of interaction between the different minerals that resulted in over-reporting fluorite and under-reporting zinc. In any event the scale of the under-estimation seems to be of the order of 40 per cent. Another contributory reason for the discrepancy is that the original assays were carried out at the...