Modern Mining September 2015

DIAMONDS

Soil sampling the key to kimberlite exploration 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.

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

A Pangolin soil sampling team at the Malatswae project.

September 2015  MODERN MINING  45