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Sangola promising despite Randgold pull-out – GoldStone

16th April 2014

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Senegal-based Sangola project remained promising despite Randgold Resources' withdrawal from the joint venture (JV) earlier this month, West and Central Africa-focused exploration company GoldStone averred on Wednesday.

The London-listed group, subject to funding, intended to continue work – particularly around widely spaced drill lines undertaken by Randgold last year – on the permit site located in the south-eastern corner of Senegal.

During 2013, the JV carried out a 10 000 m reverse circulation (RC) drill programme to partially test the Baraboye, Thiabedji, Tiobo and Ibel gold prospects.

Early in April, Randgold stepped away from the JV, which was formed a year ago to explore and potentially develop the Sangola gold project, as the project no longer met the scale of the company’s internal investment criteria – a deposit with potential to deliver more than three-million ounces at an average grade above 3 g/t.

The 2013 agreement outlined that if a prefeasibility study indicated that the mining of at least one-million ounces of gold would not be economically and commercially feasible, the JV would cease to have effect.

Randgold remarked that the permit was “still prospective for smaller or lower-grade deposits than those which pass our investment filters".

But, the licence area, which was based in a prolific gold province where more than 30-million ounces of gold had been discovered in the past ten years, was large and had not, to date, been sufficiently tested by either GoldStone or Randgold, said GoldStone exploration director Dr Hendrik Schloemann, adding that the permit had not lost its potential to yield a “significant” discovery.

“GoldStone's technical team has reviewed the geological data set and confirms that it believes that the potential remains to make a meaningful discovery at Sangola and that further work is justified,” he explained.

Schloemann said the RC drilling at the Thiabedji deposit confirmed low-grade mineralisation over a 70-m-wide zone to a depth of about 100 m, with drill holes in this zone yielding 39 m at 0.67 g/t, 38 m at 0.34 g/t, 30 m at 0.28 g/t and 27 m at 0.45 g/t in a “promising structural setting”.

“Deeper drilling should be carried out to test if these intersects demarcate the peripheral portion of a higher-grade system,” he noted.

Results from RC drilling along widely spaced lines between 1.6 km and 2.7 km apart at the Baraboye deposit confirmed low-grade mineralisation over a 100-m-wide zone to a depth of about 100 m.

“Drill holes in this zone yielded 7 m at 1.53 g/t, 6 m at 0.72 g/t, 9 m at 0.52 g/t, 16 m at 0.16 g/t and 9 m at 0.25 g/t in sheared andesites of the central Baraboye structural corridor,” Schloemann added.

He suggested further infill and deeper drilling to test for potential higher-grade mineralisation, as well as the extension to the north-west of a drill line across the central structure to test the best part of the gold anomaly at surface.

“At the Baraboye northern structure, Birimian-aged schists, which were mapped by Randgold, coincide with a significant gold anomaly at surface which remains untested,” Schloemann pointed out.

Meanwhile, GoldStone noted that no drill testing had been carried out over the Gangara prospect, where a surface gold anomaly close to the village of Gangara coincided with the location of the gold-fertile Main Transcurrent Shear Zone structure. Geological mapping and infill surface sampling should also be carried out to define the area further, the company said.

The Bandafassi, Lankanta and Samalia prospects contained “interesting structural targets”, with Lankanta, a stream sediment anomaly, justifying further geological mapping and possible in-fill soil sampling.

Edited by Tracy Hancock
Creamer Media Contributing Editor

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