A piece of the Lyby drill core

Last night I came back home with a small piece of the Lyby drill core. Now you might wonder how I could get hold of this precious piece of rock.

Yesterday evening I was in Simrishamn, because the chairperson of the district council (kommunstyrelse) of the municipality of Simrishamn had organised an information meeting regarding ScandiVanadium’s exploration and mining plans. Jeanette Ovesson, the chair of the council had invited representatives of ScandiVanadium, members of the county administration board of Skåne and VetoNu. And VetoNu had asked to bring a geologist along, which happened to be me.

The information meeting started with a presentation by ScandiVanadium, which was followed by a presentation by representatives of the county administration board of Skåne. Last, but not least VetoNu and I had our short slide show. Strangely, ScandiVanadium did not want that VetoNu‘s Anita Ullmann and Johan Gran, listened to their presentation, and also left, when it was time for the county administration board of Skåne and VetoNu to make their presentations. However, I was lucky and got the opportunity to listen to ScandiVanadium‘s presentation and was seated just a few chairs away from David Minchin and Alex Walker.

What is my impression after having listened to ScandiVanadium? Disappointment actually. The information they presented was probably new for the audience, but was mainly repetition for me. Basically everything is presented on ScandiVanadium‘s web page and in the various brochures, working plans, investors presentations, and so on.

What did strike me however, was the poor design of ScandiVanadium‘s powerpoint slides, since I had expected something much more flashy and appealing; I was also pretty surprised to see how naive the whole venture was presented. Moreover, the Swedish spokesperson for ScandiVanadium gave the impression that she did not really know what she was talking about and had a hard time translating a question from Swedish to English and back to Swedish. I also did not quite understand if it was a language / translation problem that David Minchin did not always really answer a question from the audience, but drifted off.

So, what sort of new information did I get out of ScandiVanadium‘s presentation and the Q & A session? That the information, which was delivered to the district council (kommunstyrelse), differs from the information that is presented to investors. David Minchin talked for example about opening one single mine only, while investors are pampered with the extraction of 610 – 1200 million tons of shale. There was no mentioning of the geology, the hydrology and of the dangers/potentials connected to mining Alum shale. There was also no clear answer to why vanadium cannot be extracted from mining waste, except for that the costs for doing so are far too high. But how high are the costs for opening a new mine and building up a Pressure Oxidation plant?

Employment is always an important issue when it comes to the establishment of new industries. If I am not absolutely wrong, then David Minchin said something about 200 jobs. I forgot to ask how he will fit in 200 people in a mine that measures 500 x 500 m.

My overall conclusion is that I have rarely seen so little professionalism. Maybe Bergsstaten should conduct interviews with the companies that apply for exploration permits instead of strictly following the law and handing out permits based on a minimum of information?

ScandiVanadium left a piece of a drill core from the Lyby drilling as a present to Jeanette Ovesson, the chair of the district council (kommunstyrelse). After my presentation, Jeanette no longer wanted to keep the piece of rock, since she was afraid that it might be Alum shale and contain a lot of uranium. I was happy to take it! It is not every day that I am offered a piece of a Skåne drill core. However, I have no idea if the rock is derived from the Alum shale or the Dictyonema shale (the target for ScandiVanadium), or from bedrock above the shale; I don’t know from which drill hole it comes and from which depth. In this respect, it is pretty useless from a geological point of view, but it remains an interesting memory. I will in any case ask a specialist for help so that I at least can get a bit more information. Maybe I can even scan it for uranium and vanadium?