Commences Environmental Baseline Study
Manganese X Energy Corp. (TSXV:MN) has brought in anadditional rig to expedite its drilling programme at the Battery Hill Project in New Brunswick, Canada and shorten the timeline for final assay results
CEO, Martin Kepman, said the decision to contract an additional rig will allow the company to accelerate its drilling agenda to take advantage of the higher profile on manganese for EV battery usage.
“At Tesla’s Battery Day in September, Musk said Tesla’s next generation EV batteries will contain 1/3 manganese,” Mr Kepman said.
“Being close to the US border gives our manganese property a strategic advantage as Tesla has stated unequivocally their intent to source energy metals from the North American chain.”
The company is drilling approximately 25 holes totalling at least 3,400m.
“The intent of the drill programme is to significantly expand and upgrade our current classification of mineralisation to inferred or higher resource status,” Mr Kepman said.
“The programme is focusing on near surface, higher grade areas of the deposit such as the Moody Hill zones. To date, six holes have been completed with two holes in progress with approximately 1000 metres drilled.”
The company has announced that GHD has been engaged to conduct environmental baseline work beginning by early November 2020.
The Focus will be on compiling an environmental baseline database for the Property including assembly of relevant legislation and environmental data from public and private databases.
This initial environmental baseline work will assist in identifying the possible presence of any sensitive flora and fauna, as well as establishing any pre-existing conditions against which changes can be monitored.
The environmental baseline will consist of: (i) documentation of existing environmental conditions on the Property, (ii) collection of surface water and watercourse sediments samples on or in close proximity to the Property, as well as (iii) GHD will issue database search requests to the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre for sighting records of rare and endangered flora and fauna within five kilometres of the Property and environmentally applicable Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping layers of the Property area from the New Brunswick Department of Natural Resources.
Further environmental, archaeological, social and community related work will continue under phase 2 programees as the Battery Hill project advances. “We are happy to be working with GHD on initiating our phase 1 environmental work program at Battery Hill. We continue to be forward-looking with respect to the advancement and de-risking of the Battery Hill project as we progress towards a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA),” Mr Kepman said.
