Mauritanian Saudi Phosphate Company (MSP) is a joint venture between private investors (80 %) and the Mauritanian Government (20%) who are planning to develop the Bofal and Loubboïra phosphate rock deposits.
MSP has an investigation license for 995 km2 located 390 km to the southeast of Nouakchott, but the phosphate resource that is the focus of the current project occupies very small part of the license area 48,30 km²
GEOLOGY AND MINERALISATION
The Bofal and Loubboïra phosphate’s ore deposit belong to t he huge sedimentary Senegal-Mauritania-Guinea Basin, the westernmost coastal basin of West Africa with a surface area of about 340.000 km2 from north to south, it covers four countries: Mauritania, Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea Bissau.
The deposits of Bofal-Loubboïra are located in an internal marine shelf environment, on the eastern edge of the Senegal Basin, near the Mauritanides basement.
The deposits where formed by sedimentation in a marine near-shore environment in the Middle Eocene age. Their lithostratigraphic sequence is a phosphatic succession (from less than1 m to 12 m thick) has a varying lithology, ranging from only phosphate
(monolayer) to alternating phosphate-dolomite-claystone marked by rapid lateral and vertical variations of facies and thickness; form top to ground: gravel, organic soil, yellow clay, phosphates layer and sandstone layer.