The development of the Combined Reserves International Reporting Standards Committee (CRIRSCO) family of international reporting codes is a response to a number of mining industry 'bubbles', e.g. the Poseidon nickel boom and bust of 1969/70 and the Bre-X scandal of 1997. Although the USA and Australia had already started developing their codes (1988 and 1989 respectively), the international initiative to standardize reporting definitions for Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves began at the 15th Council of Mining and Metallurgical Institutions (CMMI) Congress at Sun City, South Africa in 1994. The ad-hoc International Definitions Group (later to become CRIRSCO) was tasked with the primary objective of developing a set of international standard definitions for the reporting of Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves. Deliberations continued, with agreement being reached for the definitions of the two major categories, Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves, and their respective sub-categories Measured, Indicated, and Inferred Mineral Resource, and Proved and Probable Mineral Reserves under the Denver Accord in 1997. Following these agreements, an updated version of the JORC Code was released in Australia in 1999 and the first SAMREC Code was issued in 2000.
Carbonaceous shale is more topical than ever before due to the associated unconventional resources of methane. The use of FTIR, SEM-EDX, and mineralogical analyses has demonstrated a promising approach to assess methanogenesis potentials in a more rapid and reliable manner for preliminary prospecting. Representative core samples from the borehole that penetrated the carbonaceous Mikambeni shale Formations were investigated for methanogenesis potentials. The absorption band stretches from 1650 cm−1 to 1220 cm−1 in wavenumber, corresponding to C-O stretching and OH deformation of acetic and phenolic groups in all studied samples, thereby suggesting biogenic methanogenesis. The CO2 was produced by decarboxylation of organic matter around 2000 cm−1 and 2300 cm−1 and served as a source of the carboxylic acid that dissolved the feldspar. This dissolution process tended to release K+ ions, which facilitated the illitization of the smectite minerals. The SEM-EDX spectroscopy depicted a polyframboidal pyrite structure, which indicated a sulfate reduction of pyrite minerals resulting from microbial activities in an anoxic milieu and causes an increase in alkalinity medium that favors precipitation of dolomite in the presence of Ca and Mg as burial depth increases. The contact diagenesis from the proximity of Sagole geothermal spring via Tshipise fault is suggested to have enhanced the transformation of smectite to chlorite via a mixed layer corrensite in a solid-state gradual replacement reaction pathway. The presence of diagenetic chlorite mineral is characteristic of low-grade metamorphism or high diagenetic zone at a temperature around 200 °C to 230 °C and corresponds to thermal breakdown of kerogen to methane at strong absorption band around 2850 cm−1 and 3000 cm−1, indicating thermal methanogenesis.
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