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September 2015
MODERN MINING
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A
veteran of diamond exploration
in Southern Africa, Daniels has
several discoveries to his name,
including the Klipfontein kim-
berlite pipe in South Africa and
the DK4 kimberlite in the Orapa Kimberlite
Field (OKF), reportedly the only kimberlite
in the area not to have been discovered by De
Beers. Companies he has worked for over his
career have included Falconbridge Explora-
tion, Botswana (for whom he evaluated the
180 ha crater facies M1 kimberlite) and Trans
Hex (where he was a senior member of the
team which evaluated and subsequently de-
veloped the Dokolwayo kimberlite mine in
Swaziland).
In Angola he was Chief Geologist for Roan
Selection Trust and oversaw production from
five alluvial diamond deposits, his duties
encompassing grade control and predictions,
production and mining reconciliations, and
the monitoring of diamond population dis-
tributions. He also has extensive experience
of Zimbabwe – he consulted on the River
Ranch kimberlite and also discovered (while
working for Trillion Resources) the Mambali
Kimberlite Field.
More recently, he was a co-founder of African
Diamonds, which was responsible for much of
the early development work on the AK6 project
in Botswana, AK6 being the kimberlite which
now underpins Lucara’s spectacularly success-
ful Karowe mine. Pangolin, now in existence
for several years, is his latest venture in the
diamond field and is the holder of several proj-
ects in Botswana, among them Malatswae in
the centre of the country, Tsabong North in the
south-west, and Jwaneng South, about 50 km to
Soil sampling
the key to
kimberlite exploration
A Pangolin soil sampling team at the Malatswae project.
At the recent Botswana Resource Sector Conference in
Gaborone, Botswana, Dr Leon Daniels, founder and CEO
of TSX-V-listed diamond explorer Pangolin Diamonds,
gave an intriguing presentation on the history of soil
sampling in Botswana, demonstrating how changes in the
methodology applied over the past 60 years had resulted in
new diamond discoveries. He argued that soil sampling would
prove a more effective technique in future diamond exploration
programmes than either drilling or geophysics.
Chrome diopside fromMalatswae with
dense cleavage planes showing alteration.
DIAMONDS