The company said it had retained Utah-headquartered consultant Norwest Corporation to prepare the evaluation for the properties, which include six mining exploration licenses in the Choir-Nyalga coal basin of central Mongolia.
It announced late last week it had acquired the licences from five privately-held Mongolian companies for $US5.8 million. Collectively known as the CN Coal Properties, they are contiguous and make up an aggregate area of 13,096 hectares (131 square miles) about 170 kilometres from the Trans-Mongolian Railway.
Under the terms of the definitive agreements, the interest acquisition is subject to the completion of legal and technical due diligence as well as TSX Venture Exchange acceptance.
Norwest was engaged for the preliminary assessment project after supervising a 2009 review of a 2000 metre exploration drill program at three of the six sites. The program had not been previously interpreted and will be used along with historical data to assess and classify coal quantities for the properties.
Norwest’s work to complete the technical report will be completed in two phases, the first involving the completion of the data analysis from the 2009 review as well as seam correlation, geological modeling and preliminary resource assessment. This is expected to be completed by next month.
“Phase I efforts are intended to provide Lucky Strike with a preliminary assessment of reportable coal resource estimates that could be included in a NI 43-101 compliant resource calculation,” the company said.
“Based on results of the Phase I work program, Lucky Strike may elect to proceed with Phase II, which would include completion and filing of a NI 43-101…report.”
The initial NI 43-101 estimates the ranges of preliminary potential tonnages between 159 to 178 million tonnes of lignite thermal coal within the 2156ha represented by the three exploration licenses under study.
Potential tonnage within and surrounding the properties, including licenced and non-licenced areas in the area, total Mongolian P1 resources of 232Mt, P2 resources of 1.017Bt and P3 resources of 271.4Mt for a total of 1.52Bt of historical resource.
