De Beers encara como alta prioridade exploracao de diamantes em Angola

Lido no Rapaport:

De Beers sees Angola as a high-priority for diamond exploration and expects to unveil an economically viable diamond deposit that will help the company regain almost US $250 million it has spent on searching for diamonds in the country. ''We are confident we can find something that will allow us to recover all our investment,'' De Beers business manager in Angola, Pedro Lago de Carvalho, told Bloomberg news. He noted that the company was awaiting evaluation results from three kimberlites at Mulepe, located 500 miles east of Luanda, within the next two months, at which time De Beers would meet with state diamond company Endiama to decide how best to proceed. De Beers has a 49 per cent share in the Mulepe concession, with Endiama holding the remaining share. Bloomberg reported that De Beers has also found diamonds in a 3,000-square-kilometer concession near Lucapa in the Luanda North province, the last remaining site out of the five that De Beers has explored in Angola since 2005. Lago de Carvalho stressed that the deposit was still in the exploration phase with no formal time line set to advance. De Beers has allocated an annual budget of US $30 million for prospecting in Angola, which in 2011 produced 8.32 million carats of diamonds worth more than US $1.16 billion.