Diamond Fields International’s joint venture partner, Manafa International Trade company of Saudi Arabia, has been granted an exclusive mining license for a period of 30 years, extending over the Atlantis II Deeps, one of the largest hydrothermal polymetallic deposits in the world, located within the Red Sea. DFI owns 50.1% of the venture and Manafa owns 49.9%. The project will be developed in defined stages, commencing with a scoping study to start immediately – the Atlantis II Deeps has a surface area of 60 square km (23 square miles) and contains an extensive volume of metal enriched mud, the consistency of soft toothpaste.
Extensive historical work has been conducted on the project, with a total of 628 cores having been taken, with a total length of approximately 4km. The bulk of the cores are in an excellent state of preservation, which will enable Diamond Fields to produce a preliminary NI 43-101 compliant resource statement for the deposit. Historical exploration work undertaken by the former Preussag AG culminated in a program to demonstrate the technical viability of mining the deposit and processing it through to the production of metals. This was accomplished through a maritime test pilot mining operation conducted over a 4 month period from March to June 1979, and resulting in the production of metals using hydrometallurgy. This work demonstrated that the metal-rich sediments could be successfully raised from the sea floor and processed. More than $70 million (in 1970’s dollars) has been spent to date in research work conducted on the deposit and funded by the Government of Saudi Arabia.
The latest historic resource estimates (not NI 43-101 compliant) of Atlantis II Deeps suggest tremendous economic potential with approximately 1.83 Mt of Zn, 402,000 t of Cu and 3432 t of Ag contained within 89.5 million tones of ore (dry salt free).
Diamond Fields has reached agreement with David Heydon, former CEO of Nautilus Minerals Inc., to spearhead development of this project. Commenting on this significant project, Wayne Malouf, DFI’s Chief Executive Officer said “Diamond Fields is pleased to be teaming with Manafa to develop this exceptional project and excited at the opportunity to bring DFI’s specialist marine mining expertise to bear on this world-class deposit.”