Somaliland is a self declared independent country and became a democratic country in 2012 with an electoral government,  along the East Coast of African continent. The last 24 years long  civil war had devastated the entire country. Till date the country do not have a road map, mineral map and many other things needed for the planning and development of a country. The topography is similar to desert area, without trees. Water is an acute problem. People are majority Muslim, peace loving and co-operative unlike that of Somalia, where there is a threat of live for non-Muslims. During two geological exploration trips in 2015 and 2016 by the Indian geologists with the co-operation with the Ministry of Mining & Geology, Somaliland four different promising blocks for Gold, Copper, Platinum, Columbite and Tantalite had been identified through long geological traverses. 

BACKGROUND: During 2015 Geologists examined some area and collected grab samples of mineral bearing rocks from the surface and the ICP-OES analysis was done at the CSIR run National Mineral Laboratory, Jamshedpur, India. Being encouraged by the results , the second trip for further exploration started during 2016 which lasted for one month followed by satellite imagery interpretations to select promising mineral bearing blocks. The objective of the second exploration team was to delineate suitable mineral blocks for making Mining Lease applications. Geological maps on scale 1:50,000 RF was prepared. Large numbers of surficial grab samples were collected and few samples were analysed by ICP-OES in the National Mineral Laboratory, Jamshedpur. 

COMMERCIAL CUTOFF GRADE : 

 FUTURE EXPLORATION STRATEGY: Precise exploration parameters will be as following 

1.Re-selection of potential blocks limiting to 1.0 square kilometer for mining – 7 days

2.Preparation of large scale geological map in scale 1:2000 RF over 0.5 sq.km. out of the re-selected 1.0 sq.km. block through 20 meters gridding and pegging by hand held Brunton compass. Simultaneously data for drawing 2.0 meters interval contours with the help of GPS.  Timeline – 20 days 

3.Surface grab sampling of rock for Chemical(ICP-OES) and Fire assay analysis for suspected gold bearing samples. Timeline – 2 days

4.Without waiting for the report on the samples collected, trial excavations can be taken up in form of 6 no. of trenches ( 2m X 1m X 2m ) at the selected sites. Composite channel samples from the walls of the trenches at 0.5 m interval from the surface will be done. Timeline – 30 days 

5.The soil and rock recovered from the trenches will be stored and will be grinded to at least 300 mesh weighed and water panned adding Mercury for recovery of Gold. Timeline – 30 days . 

6.Compilation of all the results on exploration on GIS table – 7 days

7.Suitable drilling locations will be drilled by coring drill machine upto a depth of 100 meters at at least 10 locations. Time line – one year

8.The core logging followed by composite core sampling will be sampled at 0.5 meter interval for chemical analysis. Timeline – 7 days 

9.Final compilation of geological report will be done – 15 days 

10.Ore body modelling and Mining Plan preparation – 15 days

BUDGET ESTIMATION FOR THE EXPLORATION 

If the test panning results for Gold will be encouraging , immediately after 2 months without waiting for the drilling , the exploratory mining will be done. One 100 ton per hour Gold washery has to be purchased which may cost around 30 lakhs INR.   

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