… and they are still drilling

August 8th, 2019 ScandiVanadium sent out a press release where they informed that the drilling campaign in Lyby has started. The press release stated that a total of five drill holes with a maximum depth of between 60 and 125 m will be cored and that it will take 2-4 days per locality to core. Five times four days makes 20 days. According to my calendar, the whole drilling should have been completed by September 5th.

Coring locations 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 and 35 according to ScandiVanadium’s work plan of January 8th, 2019.

It is early October by now.

Why this delay? Obviously some of the originally planned localities did not turn out as expected by ScandiVanadium. So what are ScandiVanadium‘s new plans?

Part of the Geological Map A212 made by the Geological Survey of Sweden 1999 (Erlström et al. 1999). The light blue and light olive colors show where rocks younger than the Alum shale are close to the surface; the beige color marks where the Alum shale has been mapped close to the surface. Red squares indicate the approximate location of ScandiVanadium’s original and new drill holes.
The target rock, the Dictyonema shale, was not reached in holes 31 and 34. Therefore coring locations are being moved. Hole 31 is moved to the new coring point 2 (HDD004) and hole 34 (or coring point 5/HDD005 is moved further to the northwest. A new hole 3b (HDD003b) is added. Note that the position of the drill holes is approximate.

The information I have from Hörby commune dated 16th September 2019 (Dnr: M-2019-32) and 23rd September 2019 (Dnr: M-2019-32) is the following (note my free English translation of the Swedish text): Coring point 31, which is now called coring point 2 (HDD004), will be moved 300 m further to the north and in the middle of the Lyby peatbog. The reason given for this is that the coring equipment does not allow reaching the bedrock in question. Coring point 34, which is now called coring point 5 (HDD005), is moved 1 100 m to the northwest out of the same reason, i.e. the coring equipment did not allow reaching the target bedrock. In addition, a new core locality is needed, according to ScandiVanadium, to make sure that the whole target bedrock can be drilled. This new hole, which is called 3b (HDD003b), is located ca. 700 m to the east of coring point 30 (or coring point 1).

The target bedrock is, as you all may know, the Dictyonema shale, which is the uppermost part of the Alum shale formation (see Figure below). I interpret the information I have from Hörby commune as such that the coring company did not have enough equipment to core deep enough to reach the shale in question, which means deeper than 125 m. From this I draw the further conclusion that ScandiVanadium drilled through Silurian and Ordovician rocks at points 31 and 34, and that these rock layers had much greater thicknesses than anticipated (more than the 125 m as indicated in the company’s work plan).

But all of this sounds really just too strange. A drilling company can easily add more rods to drill deeper. If they don’t have the equipment on site, they can ask for it to be sent. But then ScandiVanadium may be not interested in Dictyonema shale that lies very deep (>125 m deep)? The whole story did however bother me and therefore I dug deeper into the existing geological literature (or let’s say I read the existing papers more carefully than before).

On the geological map shown above it says that the Dictyonema shale can be found in about 35 m depth (Oal 35 within the olive colored part) below younger rock layers (see figure above). This assumption is based on mapping and coring data from SGU (Erlström et al. 1999, 2001). A deep drill core, 1 to 2 km south-southeast of Lyby, had suggested that Lower Ordovician Alum shale (which is the Dictyonema shale) is present. The SGU data sets also indicate that the rock layers in the area dip 10–15° to the SE and that several NW–SE oriented faults and dolerite dykes are present and divide the bedrock into minor blocks (Erlström et al. 2001). My thoughts were therefore that ScandiVanadium may have hit a dolerite dyke or that the Dictyonema shale really was located too deep to be mined because of the existing fault system.

But things still did not make sense. Therefore I read a later paper by Erlström et al. (2001) again. The article reports results from another deep drill core that was obtained in 1998 at the northern edge of the Lyby peatbog (900 m SSE of Lyby church) (Erlström et al. 2001). This drill core is thus a different one from that mentioned above. The succession of rock layers in the new (Lyby peatbog) drill core suggested that the Komstad limestone lies directly on top of the Alum shale. Now this is really interesting.

Simplified Precambrian to Ordovician stratigraphy for eastern Skåne. Modified from Eriksson (2012).

Finding the Komstad limestone on top of the Alum shale would mean that chunks of rocks are missing in Lyby – but which and how much of it? Erlström et al. (2001) further write that the whole Alum Shale interval (35.5-55 m) present in their drill core can be correlated to the upper Cambrian. Now this tells me that the Dictyonema shale, the Björkåsholmen formation and the Toyen shale (which are of lower Ordovician age) are not present at all.

To make a long story short: the drill core from 1998 from the Lyby peatbog and published by Erlström et al. (2001) suggests that finding the Dictyonema shale in the Lyby area could prove to be very difficult, because the chances are very high that there is no Dictyonema shale at all in Lyby.

ScandiVanadium did not chose the easiest place in terms of geology and despite reports by their ‘able’ or ‘competent’ geologist, things have turned out much more tricky. Maybe the homework was after all not fully done? And with this I mean that the company’s and the able geologist’s knowledge of the local geology is poor and that not enough information had been gathered prior to drilling.

What the whole story tells us is that with enough background knowledge in geology, one would not have chosen this site to search for the Dictyonema shale in the first place.

This story also shows that those who provide permits based on a company’s working plan, that is the Swedish Mining Inspectorate (Bergsstaten), lack the necessary geological knowledge and only handle applications following jurisdiction, i.e. the Mineral Acts.

This story further shows that local authorities do not have local and regional geological knowledge since they accept a working plan without questioning if it is at all appropriate from a geological perspective.

So let’s see if ScandiVanadium finds the Dictyonema shale after all in Lyby. If not, then this specific case will be a perfect example of geological incompetence on all levels.

Reference:

Eriksson M., 2012: Stratigraphy, facies and depositional history of the Colonus Shale Trough, Skåne, southern Sweden. Dissertations in Geology at Lund University, No. 310, 37 pp. https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/3044900

Erlström, M., Ahlberg, P. & Löfgren, A., 2001: Lower Palaeozoic stratigraphy at Lyby and Tängelsås, central Scania, southern Sweden. GFF, Vol. 123 (Pt. 1, March), pp. 7–14. Stockholm. ISSN 1103-5897. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233339018_Lower_Palaeozoic_stratigraphy_at_Lyby_and_Tangelsas_central_Scania_southern_Sweden

Erlström, M., Kornfält, K.-A. & Sivhed, U., 1999: Bedrock map 2D Tomelilla NV, scale 1:50,000. Sveriges geologiska undersökning Af 212.