Significant resource increase for Orezone’s Bombor

Vancouver – A resource update on Orezone Gold‘s (ORE-T) Bomboré project has established it as the largest undeveloped gold deposit in Burkina Faso with 1.6 million indicated oz. gold.

The update has 59% more total contained ounces at Bomboré and a 48% increase in grade compared with the last resource. The new estimate was made possible thanks to a 42,500-metre reverse circulation drill program, designed to upgrade the oxide resource, that wrapped up earlier this year.

Combining the oxide, transition and fresh rock, Bombore now has 60.9 million indicated tonnes grading 0.81 gram gold per tonne, and a further 60.6 million inferred tonnes grading 0.96 gram gold.

The oxide resource has 34 million indicated tonnes grading 0.67 gram gold, the transition has 11.2 million indicated tonnes grading 0.84 gram gold and the fresh has 15.7 million indicated tonnes grading 1.1 grams gold.

The resources are within a 4.3-sq.-km of conceptual open pit shells, roughly 11km long and up to 1km wide while the anomaly has been outlined over 14 km.

Orezone’s board has approved a short-term $2.5 million exploration program to follow up on new surface targets and to further increase fresh rock resources above 1 gram per tonne. The resource remains open to depth and largely along strike.

The company expects to complete a preliminary economic assessment by the first quarter of 2011. Metallurgical tests finished late last year were encouraging enough that the company embarked on its extensive drill program.

The 105-sq-km Bomboré project is located beside a main highway 80 km east of the nation’s capital Ouagadougou.

The company has been exploring in Burkina Faso since 1996, though reformed in a new entity in early 2009 after selling its 3.9 million oz. Essakane project to Iamgold (IMG-T, IAG-N).

In Burkina Faso, the government has the option of taking a 10% carried interest in a project with mining permits. There is also a 3% royalty that could increase to 5% if amendments to the mining law go through.

Other than its Burkina Faso interests, Orezone also has uranium prospects in Niger for which it recently raised $5 million for exploration.

Orezone’s stock price had climbed 73¢ or 48.3% to $2.24 by mid-afternoon on the news. The company has a 52-week stock-price range between 54¢ and $1.79 and 68 million shares outstanding.