ENCORE ENERGY CORP. enCore Energy Corp. announced the highest grade drill results to date since drilling activities restarted from the Alta Mesa Project in South Texas. These results significantly exceed the cutoff grade thickness requirements for In-Situ Recovery ("ISR") of uranium.
The Company also reports that work to advance the Alta Mesa Uranium Central Processing Plant and Wellfield ("Alta Mesa") towards production is advancing on schedule. Highlights include: Drilling from Alta Mesa's Production Area Authorization ("PAA") provides results that range up to a grade thickness of 8.4 with a maximum thickness of 13.5 feet. The cutoff grade thickness for ISR in South Texas is generally accepted to be 0.3 with grade thickness being the relevant factor in determining reasonable prospects for economic extraction; The Alta Mesa ISR Uranium Central Processing Plant ("CPP") upgrades and refurbishments are advancing on schedule for the planned early 2024 resumption of uranium production; Initial production from Alta Mesa's PAA-7 wellfield will have a total of 59 production wells with 36 extraction wells and 23 injection wells that form the startup production patterns.
57 of these are completed with the last two wells scheduled for completion over the next few days. The wells are being prepared for connection to the pipeline to the CPP; Production from the wellfield at Alta Mesa will be increasing as additional production patterns are completed following the initial 59 wells and duplicate the process used for the initial Alta Mesa startup in 2005. Drilling and well installation for the follow-on production patterns is already well underway and will continue as CPP capacity is reached; and As previously reported, uranium production from the Rosita Uranium CPP, which commenced in November 2023 and has completed its first shipment of uranium, continues to maintain expected production levels.
Wellfield delineation drilling commenced in the spring of 2023 at the Alta Mesa Project PAA-7 along a previously defined ore body consisting of stacked roll fronts. The NI 43-101 Technical Report dated January 19, 2023, and titled "Technical Report Summary for the Alta Mesa Uranium Project, Brooks and Jim Hogg Counties, Texas, USA" stated that PAA-7 contains 1.292 million pounds U3O8 indicated resources and 0.175 million pounds U3O8 inferred resources with an average grade thickness (GT is defined as grade multiplied by intercept thickness) ranging from 0.59 to 0.68 GT using a 0.3 GT cutoff. As has been observed from historic drilling at Alta Mesa, the density of drilling necessary to install an ISR wellfield provides the opportunity to identify higher grade portions of the ore body than initially estimated with broader spaced drilling programs. The table of drilling results below confirm that observation, and the results exceed the historical observations for PAA-7, to date.
As drilling continues during additional wellfield development in PAA-7, we expect that we will continue to observe results that could lead to an average GT for the area significantly higher than the average GT reported in the technical report.
