Boss Energy Limited (ASX: BOE; OTCQB: BQSSF) is pleased to report stronger progress in several areas as part of its preparations for the restart of production at its honeymoon uranium project in South Australia.
Boss is implementing multiple workflows in accordance with its strategy to ensure that once the company determines the uranium price to make it commercially viable, Honeymoon will restart production as close as possible. Duncan Craib, Managing Director of Boss said: "Our latest outstanding progress proves why Honeymoon will become Australia's next uranium producer. "Our strategy is to ensure that Boss can move from a final investment decision to execution and production as quickly as possible.
The project progressed as scheduled, and the project execution plan was approved
More than half of the key planning tools for front-end engineering design (FEED) research have been completed, and it is still expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2022. This will allow detailed design to begin immediately after the final investment decision is made. Boss also approved Honeymoon's restarted project execution plan (PEP), which outlines the goals, processes, and strategies that the company's personnel (ownership team) and appointed EPCM engineers will adopt. The plan will also establish a framework to ensure that project expectations and key performance indicators are met. PEP is undertaken by the owner's team and will become the management control document for all aspects of Honeymoon's restart operation and execution stage, to ensure that the project meets the target production requirements. The plan ensures that all parties who manage the project adopt a consistent approach.
Piping and instrumentation diagrams close to finalization
The completion and locking of the pipeline and instrument diagram (P&ID) design is now 92% complete (88 out of 95 diagrams), an increase from the 69 diagrams completed and announced on October 6, 2021. The completion of the P&ID layout reached an important milestone for the NIMCIX column. The remaining P&ID layout is expected to be completed in the next few weeks, including Wellfield Instructure, water treatment plant and general water supply services
Boss has taken another key step in its honeymoon re-starting production strategy by signing a high-voltage connection service agreement with Essential Energy, a statutory state-owned company established under the Energy Service Companies Act of 1995 (New South Wales). Ensuring power supply is the primary requirement of any mine development. The honeymoon mine is powered by overhead transmission lines from the National Grid through Australia's oldest mining town, Broken Hill (located 65 kilometers to the southeast) and near Cockburn. Honeymoon's unique geographical location ensures that the safety of electricity will be provided by the National Grid. Upgrading Honeymoon's nameplate output to 2.45 Mlbs U308 requires negotiations on a new high-voltage connection agreement, which requires additional transformers and other voltage control equipment at the connection point and the destination point.
Honeymoon's well sites have been planned for exploitable resources. The distribution radius of the wellsite is changed to adapt to the shape of the ore body and to achieve an economic wellsite development cost per pound of uranium. The well site has been planned as a 5-point mode, in which one extraction well is surrounded by four injection wells. The 5-point model is a conventional ISR wellsite layout implemented in most operating ISR mines. The advantage of this layout is that it minimizes the cost of well site development and provides a flexible layout for optimizing leaching performance. A detailed review of the high-grade historical minefields revealed that only 28% (0.7 Mlbs) of the total uranium resources were produced in the existing near-mine minefields AB and C1. The survey results show that the previous wells used standard water supply well technology that failed to accurately target the mineralized layer. The main reason for the incomplete leaching of basement sand resources is the construction of well sites using methods suitable for agricultural water supply wells. This design includes a PVC pipe installed near the top of the mineralization. Then drill the well to the depth and extend the stainless steel mesh screen to the approximate position of the mineralization
This announcement includes forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on the company's expectations and beliefs about future events. Forward-looking statements are inevitably subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are not under the control of Boss Energy, which may cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. Boss Energy does not undertake to subsequently update or revise forward-looking statements made in this announcement to reflect circumstances or events after the date of this announcement.
(C) 2021 electronic news publication, source ENP Newswire