GTI Energy Limited (ASX: GTR) (GTI or Company) is pleased to advise that a total of 66 mud rotary drill holes have now been completed at its 100% owned Lo Herma ISR Uranium Project (Lo Herma), located in Wyoming’s prolific Powder River Basin (Figures 1 & 2). GTI has now completed 13,405m (43,980 ft) of drilling at Lo Herma this summer representing ~87% of the planned 76-hole program.
HIGHLIGHTS
GTI has now completed 66 resource estimate development drill holes of 76 planned at the Lo Herma ISR uranium project during the 2024 drill programDrilling to date confirms that uranium mineralisation continues north from the current mineral resource area with strong mineralised intercepts over good thicknesses encountered stretching at least 2km north along projected trendsBest mineralised intercepts reported include 6.0ft at 0.123% (1,230ppm) eU308 in drill hole LH-24-028, and 11.0 ft at 0.054% (540ppm) eU308 in drill hole LH-24-063
This news release follows on from the Company’s 31 July 2024 news release which reported results from the first ten (10) drill holes of the 2024 drill program. The results from the next fifty- six (56) drill holes (Table 2) include several highlights:
Drill hole LH-24-028 returned the highest-grade intercept at 6.0ft of 0.123% eU3O8, and a total hole grade thickness (GT) of 0.903*.45 of 56 drill holes have intercepted on trend mineralisation.Mineralisation continues across multiple sandstone units as GTI expands the mineralised trends to the north, as demonstrated by drill hole LH-24-03 which encountered 11ft of 0.054% eU3O8 (0.594 GT) and 6.5ft of 0.043% eU3O8 (0.280 GT) from different sand units.
* Typical economically viable ISR grade and GT cut-offs are: 0.02% (200ppm) U3O8and 0.2GT i.e., 10 ft (3 m) @ .02% (200ppm) U3O8.
GTI Executive Director & CEO Bruce Lane commented“Drilling to date at Lo Herma has been very successful in demonstrating extensions of mineralisation, with strong GT numbers to the north of the project area and at depth in the sands of the lower Wasatch formation. Results so far give us great confidence that we can grow the global uranium resource estimate and upgrade a material portion to the indicated category. Drilling is currently running to schedule with operations now moved to the east of the project area to test for deeper mineralisation in the Fort Union formation. The sand units of the lower Wasatch formations are showing reliable continuity and mineralisation far along trend to the north so we are now excited to see what the deeper Fort Union formation sands may hold as we move to our final exploration area for this phase of drilling.”
LO HERMA URANIUM PROJECT – LOCATION & BACKGROUND
The Lo Herma ISR Uranium Project (Lo Herma) is located in Converse County, Powder River Basin (PRB), Wyoming (WY). The Project lies approximately 15 miles north of the town of Glenrock and close to seven (7) permitted ISR uranium production facilities. These facilities include UEC’s producing Willow Creek (Irigaray & Christensen Ranch) & idled Reno Creek ISR plants, Cameco’s idled Smith Ranch-Highland ISR facilities and Energy Fuels idled Nichols Ranch ISR plant (Figure 1).
The Powder River Basin has extensive ISR uranium production history with numerous defined ISR uranium resources, central processing plants (CPP) & satellite deposits (Figure 1). The Powder River Basin has been the backbone of Wyoming U3O8 production since the 1970s.
As reported to ASX on 14 March 2023, a comprehensive historical data package, with an estimated replacement value of ~$15m, was purchased for Lo Herma in March of 2023. The data package includes original drill data for roughly 1,771 drill holes, from the 1970’s and 1980’s, pertaining to the Lo Herma region. A total of 1,391 original drill hole logs were digitised for gamma count per second (CPS) data and converted to eU3O8% grades.
833 of these historical drill holes are located on GTI’s land position and were used to prepare the maiden MRE. 21 additional drill holes are located in an expanded area of additional claims that were subsequently staked across Section 4 of Township 36N, Range 75W. Along with the 26 drill holes completed in the initial 2023 drill program, GTI holds data from 880 drill holes within the current Lo Herma mineral holdings prior to the current 76 hole drill campaign.
An initial Exploration Target for the Lo Herma project was previously announced to the ASX on 4 April 2023. An additional data package, containing previously unavailable drill maps with geologically interpreted redox trends, was subsequently secured by GTI, as announced to the ASX on 27 June 2023 (refer to Table 1).
Whilst additional redox trends were interpolated based on the 2023 drilling and acquisition of the newly located mineral claims, the Exploration Target has not yet been updated. GTI plans to update the mineral resource and exploration target estimates following completion of the current 2024 drilling campaign.
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