Geology and Mine Planning of Phosphate Deposits: Benguerir Deposit Gantour Basin – Morocco

Geological exploration of deposits leads to their geological modeling with estimation of resources and reserves of phosphate rock based on various criteria. This model is used for mine planning at different stages:
• The depletion plan
• The long term plan
• The strategic updated plan
• The business stearingThe open pit mining of phosphate deposits in the OCP consists of cutting the deposit in panels, the panel is cutting in trenches of 40m in large and the trenches are cut into block with 40mx100m. With the aim to allow the flexibility in the mine planning, the geologist must provide a chemical and physical characterization of each box with an estimation of the volumes of phosphate layers and sterile layers.At first, the characterization of blocks was done by the manual method based on maps of iso-values. As part of research for in geological modeling, we proceeded to the modeling blocks to replay to requirements of the production planning.