Okapi Resources is poised to sink its teeth into a 10,000 metre, 24-hole drilling campaign at its Middle Lake uranium project in Canada’s Athabasca Basin after its wholly-owned subsidiary Okapi Resources Canada received the government go-ahead to launch the probe.
The company says it has now got its hands on a raft of permits that will also allow it to kick off a ground-based geophysical survey at the venture.
Okapi says the near-term objective of the exploration program will see it reinterpret and reconstruct previously-acquired surface, drill, geochemical and geophysics-based data.
The ingredients will then be linked to freshly interpreted remote sensing image data to construct a robust, structural framework that can be worked into its geological model and allow the company to put together a set of drill targets.
Management says its most compelling targets could then be tested with a diamond core drilling program early next year.
By leveraging multi-spectral satellite photography with its bleeding-edge technical capabilities, Okapi believes it could unearth pockets of altered geology commonly associated with uranium mineralisation.
Middle Lake is made up of three mineral tenements that encompass a total area of about 4800 hectares and straddle the southern borders of the Carswell Structure – an area known to host a clutch of significant uranium deposits.
The Middle Lake tenure has historically seen extensive exploration with the most recent activity at the site being a 17-hole shallow hole drilling program totalling 1851m in 2015.
That campaign lifted the veil on significant abnormal radioactivity and uranium concentrations associated with graphitic rocks.
The project also sits 4 kilometres south-east of the historically producing Cluff Lake Mine, where between 1988 and 2002 about 64.2 million pounds of triuranium octoxide at a grade of 0.92 per cent was churned out.
According to the company, earlier sampling across the operation yielded samples grading up to 16.9 per cent triuranium octoxide, with work around its southern tenements coughing up specimens going around 3.7 per cent triuranium octoxide.
Okapi says work 15km south at the Shea Creek Deposit by uranium explorers Orano and UEX could also see it target a series of northwest trending uranium-rich fault zones that run through the southwest corner of the Middle Lake project.
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