37
07.13
botswana
How big a coal industry can Botswana’s coal resources support? According to
Mashale Phumaphi, MD of Shumba Coal, which holds the 1 billion tonne Sechaba
thermal coal project near Palapye, as many as 24 new mines producing over
190 Mt/a could eventually be established. He told conference delegates that the
Mmamabula and Morupule areas had the most potential, with the ability to host
up to nine mines each.
He said that 50 % (96 Mt/a) of the planned annual mine output was past the
scoping study stage with 39 % (74 Mt/a) being past the preliminary feasibility
stage. Of the planned mine output beyond scoping study stage, 63,5 Mt/a was
intended for export by rail. He added that the coal intended for power generation
in projects beyond scoping study could sustain a power industry producing over
7 GW for domestic and regional consumption.
Existing and proposed routes for exporting Botswana’s coal, as
identified by African Energy’s Frazer Tabeart in his presentation.
The proposed new routes include the TFR (Transnet Freight Rail)
Lephalale link, the Trans-Kalahari Railway and a line to Ponta-
Techobanine in Mozambique which would broadly follow the
Limpopo River down to the coast.
C
oal ‘tsunami” on Botswana’s horizon?
in discussions with interested parties in relation to a
potential transaction.”
Given its corporate problems, it was no surprise to
see that Discovery, breaking the pattern of the past
several years, was not a presenter at this year’s con-
ference. Copper was, however, covered by Johannes
Tsimako – representing Cupric Canyon Capital LLC
(CCC) – who provided delegates with an update on
what is now called the Ghanzi-Ngamiland project.
The previous owner of the project – Hana Mining –
was acquired by CCC earlier this year and Tsimako
stressed that CCC’s management team (who, he said,
had previously managed the 1,3 Mt/a mining opera-
tions of Phelps Dodge, which were acquired by Free-
port McMoRan in 2007 for US$25,9 billion) had vast
experience in all phases of the mining process from
exploration to development and operations.
As outlined by Tsimako, CCC is planning to devel-
op a 3 Mt/a opencast and underground mining opera-
tion at its Ghanzi property with the ore being treated
via a conventional process route incorporating grind-
ing and flotation to produce a deliverable concen-
trate grading 46 % Cu and 414 g/t Ag. He said head
grades were expected to be 1,02 % Cu and 12,13 g/t
Ag with the plant achieving an average copper re-
covery of 87 %. Whereas the nearby Boseto mine is
owner-operated in terms of its mining, Tsimako said
CCC would adopt a contract mining model. Look-
ing ahead, he said CCC was planning to fast track
the project. A feasibility study would be launched
in September this year for completion in September
2014. He added that construction would take place in
2015/2016 with production starting in 2017.
While the sediment-hosted copper mineralisation
occurring in the corridor between Maun and Ghanzi
– now referred as the ‘Kalahari Copperbelt’ – is said
to be similar in style to the deposits of the Central
African Copperbelt of Zambia and the DRC, another
company to present at the conference, TSX-V-listed
Tsodilo Resources, believes that its properties in
north-west Botswana, in the vicinity of the Tsodilo
Hills, actually host an extension of the Copperbelt.
As Mike de Wit, the company’s President and COO,
made clear, the sequence of rocks identified by Tso-
dilo on its tenements is identical in age and composi-
tion to those in the Copperbelt. Tsodilo is also explor-
ing for diamonds and iron ore and an article on its
activities will be published in our next issue.
Gold was the focus of a presentation by Philip Con-
don and Charles Byron of Galane Gold, who outlined
the progress being made on the Mupane gold project
near Francistown. The project is separately covered
in this issue but suffice it to say here that Mupane,
which started production in 2005 as a limited life
operation, potentially has plenty of life left in it and
could well go for another decade or more.
Uranium and coal
Moving on from diamonds and copper, Botswana has
considerable energy resources in the form of coal and
uranium and these were the subject of several pre-
sentations by companies such as Shumba Coal, Af-
rican Energy Resources, Minergy, Hodges Resources
and A-Cap, many of them of high quality. Space does
not allow
Modern Mining
to review all of them here
but two, in particular, were very impressive – the pre-
sentation by Paul Thomson on A-Cap’s Letlhakane
uranium project south of Francistown and Frazer
Tabeart’s account of the activities of African Energy,
which owns the 2,5 billion tonne Sese coal project
and which is in the process of acquiring the 1,3 bil-
lion tonne Mmamantswe coal project.
Letlhakane (which also hosts a promising coal
deposit) is the most advanced uranium project in
Botswana and Thomson – who is CEO of A-Cap – ar-
gued very convincingly that it has all the ingredients
to be developed into a successful mine. While Letl-
hakane is low grade, it contains a large high grade re-
source – 143,2 Mt at 284 ppm U
3
O
8
– which is easily
mined by open-pit methods (Thomson described the
orebody as “shallow, soft and flat”) and amenable to
treatment in a standard heap leach process. He de-
scribed the deposit as one of the few in the world ca-
pable of production within the next three years and
said it offered competitive operating costs (estimated
at US$42/lb in the first five years) and a low capex (es-
timated at under US$400 million for 3 Mlb/a produc-
tion). The project is currently in the feasibility stage
with Lycopdium appointed as the lead consultant.
Thomson said Letlhakane could, in principle, be in
operation by 2016 although this seems unlikely given
