I've been thinking about ENR's upcoming drilling and their change of tact. They are planning on drilling a lot of the magnetic lows, instead of just magnetic highs, possibly on the assumption that any magnetite in the original source intrusion has been weathered to hematite that is not magnetic. Yet they seemed to overlook that Luni is 'slightly' magnetic.
The main sources of niobium in the world, being Araxa, Catalao, Niobec, the first 2 on magnetic highs, while Niobec is on a magnetic low.
At Araxa the ore body consists of "The ore is composed principally of the minerals geothite, limonite, magnetite, barite, monazite, ilmenite, gorceixite, quartz and the niobium mineral pandaite, a bariopyrochlore."
At Araxa the ore is composed of mainly Ba in the A position in the crystal lattice while at Niobec mainly has Na in the same position in the crystal lattice. Catalao has "Pyrochlore supergroup chemistry shows a compositional trend from Ca–Na dominant pyrochlores toward Ba-enriched kenopyrochlore in fresh rock and the dominance of Ba-rich kenopyrochlore in the residual deposit."
Interesting, the 2 main deposits with mainly Ba in the A position of the crystal lattice of the pyrochlore (weathered ore body), both have magnetic signatures while the deposit with mainly Na in the A position of crystal lattice has a magnetic low signature. It'll be interesting what the analysis our pyrochlore ore body has, but I suspect Ba like Araxa and Catalao, because of the very high magnetics associated with Sambhar which I still suspect is our 'source' and very likely to have a weathered section over the top of the magnetic part of the intrusion, just like Araxa and Catalao.
If the above premise of mine is at all correct, it means ENR are drilling in the wrong places drilling in their magnetic lows, so results from their drilling will tell us a lot especially if 'Green' comes up a bust.
ENR's 'Green', being a bust, to me enhances the probabilities of our source being Sambhar, with plenty more high grade Niobium around the head section of Sambhar and the surrounding 'middling' magnetic readings. I really hope we do some drilling in this area before anyone makes any type of an offer, as it could add bags to our value, or even just delineate where our entire effort should be concentrated upon.
All IMHO of course...
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