Earlier in the year, Firestone Dia- monds announced an update of
the Orapa and Mopipi kim- berlite exploration projects in Bot-
swana, which were being explored in joint venture by De
Beers.
In February 2005, the company announced that three kimberlites had
been discovered in the Orapa Project area, approximately 15 km
south of Debswana’s Orapa Mine and that, since then, detailed
high- resolution ground geophysical surveys and drilling had been
carried out to provide an initial estimate of their size. Samples
of material recovered from drilling have been processed atechnological scheme of ore sand desgulint De
Beers’s laboratories in South Africa and all three
kimberlites have been proven to contain microdia- monds. A drill
hole between AK22 and AK23, which are 350 metres apart, intersected
kimberlite from a depth of 11 metres to 49 metres, indicating that
thmarble must be mined with channeling equipmentse two kimberlites coalesce close to surface. This provides a much
larger area of kimberlite close to surface, of approximately 9
hectares in size. Proving the presence of sizeable new
diamondiferous kimberlites close to the Orapa Mine is a
signifi-cant milestosilica sand mining in israelne for exploration in the area. On the basis of
the results, it was decided to take bulk samples from all three
kimberlites to test for the presence of macrodiamonds. Four 12-inch
diameter holes would be drilled on each kimberlite to pro-vide
approximately 100 t of material for testing. In addition, a single
17-inch dia-meter hole was to be drilled to depth in the centre of
each kimberlite. This material would be processed at De
Beers’s macrodiamond labor-atories in South Africa, and the
results will allow initial estimates of the macrodiamond grade and
value for each kimberlite to be made. Bulk sampling had been
com-pleted on AK22 and is in progress on AK23. Results of this work
were expected to be available by the end of the year. Thirty-four
new geophysical tar- gets have been drilled in the Orapa Project
and Mopipi Project areas this year, and kimberlite was inter-
sected on two of these targets. One of the targets was a new
kimberlite, known as BK53, which is located in the Mopipi Project
area, approximately 10 km north of the Letlhakane Mine. Kimberlite
was encountered at a depth of 12 m, beneath a cover of Kalahari
sands and Kalahari calcrete. The hole remained in kimberlite to a
depth of 92 m, where it entered Karoo sandstone. On the other
target where kim-berlite was intersected, kimberlite was
encountered at a depth of 36 m, beneath a cover of Kalahari sands,
Kalahari calcrete and basalt. The hole remained in kimberlite to a
depth of 169 m, where the hole was terminated. These discoveries
bring the num-ber of kimberlites in the Orapa and Mopipi Project
areas to six.