The 20,000m drilling program has officially commenced as...

The 20,000m drilling program has officially commenced as announced today, additional rigs to be drilling in about two weeks.
I expect continuous news flow re drilling cores and assay results to come until JORC early next quarter.














courtesy to @salpetie


Drill proposal:
Roche Dur


As Robleeway mentioned the RC pattern is on 100m spaced lines with holes 50m apart. Nigel estimates holes are likely to max out around 170m - not certain why but rig capacity may be an issue and diamond tails would remain an option for later.
The SW extension to RD from DDH1 is estimated at 800m which will only be partly tested by this phase of drilling.
With respect to the diamond drilling depths Nigel mentioned they plan to go to around the 300-400RL which means holes up to 450m total length.

Assuming holes at similar dips to Hole 1 and 2 shows depths around 350-380m by my estimates for the South eastern holes circled.
The diamond drill holes closer to the pit will be shallower.

Steeper holes would need to be longer to intersect the footwall base of the pegmatite.




Carriere de L'est is a fairly similar pattern to RD. Access for the RC rig is going to be challenging here.




The goal of the drilling is to produce a resource for two restricted areas of Manono.
For this area of Roche Dure an exploration target of some 300 Mt was mentioned and it is hoped the resource will be roughly even proportions of Measured, indicated and inferred with similar tonnage.
For the limited area of Carriere de L'est my notes say 250 Mt.

When asked about the inferred aspect of the resource Nigel suggested holes such as the shallow one in this image may be needed before the lakes are drained.



Regarding draining the lakes the natural slope of the land (mentioned by some posters on HC as well) could aid the process by connecting the pits with some form of drainage trenches. Vague comment from Nigel : (My paraphrasing) -The lake levels are NOT the same so there is a gradient that may work in our favour.

Like most drill proposals details will probably change as dictated by geology, access, technical and other issues.

The samples from drilling will be processed on site and shipped out in batches of around 1200 samples which will represent some 4-5 holes.
Negotiations/Planning is underway to see if they can fly the samples direct from Manono to South Africa en route Australia.
POSSIBLE PERFORMANCE OVER DRILLING PROGRAM:
Here were how KDR & PLS performed during the drillings.

I expect AVZ to follow a similar path.


KDR, started drilling on 10 August 2016, price was up from 33.5c to 82c on 4 October 2016.





PLS, had a stellar run during the drilling.






USGS Reports and References
Manono project had 72 years mining (tin) history, historical drillings were up to about 125m depth. Recently over 200m thickness discovery is adding to previous possible largest spodumene resource in the world reported by USGS.

Direct quotes from USGS reports:

"A report by Barzin, Managing Director of Geomines, states that the pegmatites are both 5.5 km long and average 400 metres wide (Barzin, 1952). The pegmatite sills have been proven to a depth of 125 metres by drilling. A calculation using these dimensions shows that re sources are enormous. The pegmatites of Manono and Kitotolo probably represent the largest spodumene resource in the world."

"The largest known lithium-containing pegmatites occur in the vicinity of Manono."

"Manono pegmatites is not a speculative resource."



USGS & Historical Geological Reference Reports:


1. USGS in 1976: Lithium requirements by the year 2000

https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1005/report.pdf

"A report by Barzin, Managing Director of Geomines, states that the pegmatites are both 5.5 km long and average 400 metres wide (Barzin, 1952). The pegmatite sills have been proven to a depth of 125 metres by drilling. A calculation using these dimensions shows that re sources are enormous. The pegmatites of Manono and Kitotolo probably represent the largest spodumene resource in the world."

2. An Abundance of Lithium, 2008 by Evans (Godfather of lithium discoveries globally)

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9b04/439bd3442f139dbbaf10d0def7e052fd03f3.pdf

"Pegmatites: The largest known lithium-containing pegmatites occur in the vicinity of Manono. Each of a pair has a length of 5,000 metres and a width of approximately 400 metres. The weathered zone has been worked for tin and columbite . Assuming a depth of only 50 metres the pegmatites could contain 2.3 million tonnes of Li."

3. An Abundance of Lithium Part 2, by Evans

http://www.evworld.com/library/KEvans_LithiumAbunance_pt2.pdf

"In Zaire he describes the Manono pegmatites is not a speculative resource. He quotes Kogel's statement which, if it refers only to pegmatites, is almost certainly correct as “dwarfing the currently known world reserves”. The tonnage was published in the NRC report as 520 million tonnes. The panel reduced the tonnage, all open-pitable, by 75% to account for mining, beneficiation and processing losses to give a total of 2.34 million tonnes of recoverable lithium."

HISTORICAL RESOURCE ESTIMATES FOR LITHIUM & TIN

There were 8 historical lithium resource estimates for Manono-Kitotolo, from 17.1Mt LCE in 1978 to 6.3Mt LCE in 2011, Avereage 9.3Mt LCE



TIN AND TANTALUM RESERVE ESTIMATES:


WHY NEED MASSIVE LITHIUM FROM AVZ?

Lithium batteries are likely to dominate over new few decades,
https://hotcopper.com.au/posts/30589597/single

2. ELECTRIC VEHICLE REVOLUTION:

2.1 Timeline announced to ban on traditional fuel vehicles:

Norway by 2025
Netherlands by 2025
Germany by 2030
India 2030
France by 2040
British 2040


2.2 China Leading the Electric Vehicle Sector:

China, has subsidised A$24 billion into the electric vehicle industry between 2009-2017.
China is also planning to implement a ban on fossil fuel cars.

China new energy car sales for December 2017:
A total of 163,000 new energy vehicles were sold last month, up 56.8%.
A total of 144,000 electric vehicles were sold last month.

China sold 28.88 million vehicles in 2017 calendar year.

China government's plan for new energy vehicles:

1. New energy vehicles sales to reach 7% of the annual sales by 2020 (30m x 7% = 2 million vehicles);

2. New energy vehicles sales to reach 15% of the annual sales by 2025 (33m x 15%= 5 million vehicles);

3. New energy vehicles sales to reach 40% of the annual sales by 2030 (38m x 40% = 15 million vehicles).

Total 1.7 million new energy vehicles in China as at 31 December 2017.
China plans to have 80 million new energy vehicles by 2030, up 4600% in 12 years.


3. INVESTMENTS IN ELECTRIC VEHICLES

Non-China Automake companies have recently announced to invest USD$90 billions in electric vehicles.

3.1 Volkswagen plans to spend up to 70 billion euros (~$84 billion USD) in order to bring 300 electric vehicle models to market by 2030 across all its brands.

3.2 Ford Motor Co will significantly increase its planned investments in electric vehicles to $11bn by 2022 and have 40 hybrid and fully electric vehicles in its model line-up, the company’s chairman, Bill Ford, said on 14 January 2018 at the Detroit auto show.

3.3 By around 2030, Toyota aims to have sales of more than 5.5 million electrified vehicles, including more than 1 million zero-emission vehicles (BEVs, FCEVs).

3.4 Chinese Auto Giant BAIC Going 100% Electric By 2025.
BAIC Chairman Xu Heyi recently got into the news when he predicted that in 2018 electric vehicle production in China would rise to more than 1 million cars, and then get up to 3 million by 2020.

......

LITHIUM DEMAND

Lithium demand is expected to increase by about 400% to 1 million LCE in 2026.
The most optimistic forecast by Lithium Americas, lithium demand is expected to increase to 3.1 million tons LCE in 2028.

At 3.1 million tons LCE annual demand, AVZ’s [email protected]%-1.5% Li2O(60%), will be valuable, imo.




UBS RESEARCH REPORT:
According to the latest UBS research, lithium demand would increase by 2511% if we are in 100% EV world, next benefit metal is cobalt with 1928% demand increase.


Here are two reports worthy reading, from IEA & UBS.



Outstanding recent drilling results >200m



ALL IMO & DYOR.