Rietkuil

Background

A 218 hectare potion of the Rietkuil prospect has been granted.  We are currently seeking clarification to the status of the other Rietkuil portions.

Geology

The Rietkuil Prospect generally has a low relief with the maximum variation in relief not exceeding 100 m. During the 1970s a box cut was excavated on the prospect close to the Fraserburg-Beaufort West road.

The Rietkuil River and the Vlaefontein River flow from north to south through the prospect. There is a farm dam down slope and due east of the stockpiles, which is used for stock watering.

The main mineralised sandstone formation on Rietkuil is known to cover an area of approximately 25,000 hectares. Approximately 33.2 km2 of this formation occurs on Brinkley’s Rietkuil Prospect. The southern part of the Rietkuil Prospect is also underlain by large areas (greater than 15 km2 combined) of sandstone formations. The potential of these sandstones are not known.

As described in Section 4.4 of the SRK Report, the sandstone bodies of the Moordenaars Member outcrop on this prospect. Four sandstone bodies have been found, but only one sandstone (variously labelled “R3” or “C” in published accounts) contains most of the uranium anomalies. The sandstone trends north-northeast for approximately 20 km and has an average width of 6 km. It consists of a multi-storey sheet and has a maximum thickness of 36m. It dips northward at a very shallow angle of 4 degrees. The regional dip is 1.25 degrees to the north.

At Rietkuil, the uranium mineralisation usually occurs in the basal parts of the thicker fluvial sandstone sequences and tends to coincide with areas of channel over-deepening and where there is carbonaceous debris within the sandstone. It has been found (Cole, 1980b) that the mineralised sandstone was usually greater than 17 m in thickness, that the intercalated siltstone and mudstone within the sandstone were thinnest and that the sandstone to siltstone/mudstone ratio was highest.

Three zones of mineralisation have been described: a basal, main and upper zone, all within the “R3” sandstone unit. The Main Zone is the best mineralised.

Mineralisation

A study of numerous drill hole logs by Cole and Wipplinger (2001) showed that the sandstone-hosted mineralisation is predominantly carbonaceous and sporadically calcareous. Samples from the calcareous sandstone yielded values of 1,788 ppm U and 118 ppm Mo (source: SRK Report Section 5.3.2).