Gold prices are back up and explorers are back to work, and it need be no surprise that southwestern Mali, with three gold producers pouring plenty of low-cost ounces, has returned to favour among junior companies as an exploration destination.
The producers never left, of course;
But another junior never left either:
On the way, it picked up the adjacent Segala concession from
Tabakoto hosts a resource of 8.1 million tonnes grading 5.1 grams gold per tonne, at a 2-gram cutoff grade. Another 2.5 million tonnes grading 5.8 grams is inferred. Segala’s resource, in all categories, is 4.2 million tonnes at an average of 5.4 grams per tonne.
The feasibility study, which took only the Tabakoto resource into account, estimated a capital cost of US$25 million to bring a 105,000-oz.-per-year mine into production. Metallurgical recoveries were 94%, and the study put cash operating costs at US$187 per oz.
Randgold, too, is at the feasibility stage on a project in the western extreme of Mali. The Loulo deposit, with a reserve of 12.1 million tonnes grading 3.7 grams gold per tonne, is being reviewed for production, and some infill drilling and metallurgical testing is being done. The project would be developed as two open pits: Loulo-0 and Yalea. Scoping studies are under way for underground resources beneath both pits.
At the Bourdala concession, about 50 km southeast of Sadiola,
A drill hole on the second zone, Nanike Sodjigui, returned 5.6 metres grading 2.3 grams gold per tonne, while another hole drilled a little to the southwest did not intersect any mineralization. A hole drilled beneath an open pit 1.5 metres north of the Nanike Sodjigui zone intersected some low gold grades but may have been drilled downdip.
The highest grades came out of the Damba Massa zone, about 2.4 km southwest of the TD. There, a single hole drilled below some orpailleur workings cut three separate zones of gold mineralization — one, 24 metres wide and grading 2 grams gold per tonne; a second, 10 metres averaging 3.9 grams; and a third, 5 metres averaging 8.6 grams. The last two intersections carried some higher-grade intervals.
More drilling is planned in the next field season, including testing on the 1.6-km-long Sabakonkon showing, an area of orpailleur workings in tourmaline sandstone host rocks.
Another project at the grassroots level is Diangounte, about 30 km southwest of Sadiola. But here, operator
At Kantela, three surface prospects are known. The first is an area of orpailleur activity that coincides with a zone of gold concentrations in soils as high as 0.66 gram per tonne. North Atlantic plans to carry out trenching in that area. The second, a 1,000-by-250-metre soil anomaly with a peak gold value of 0.9 gram per tonne, has seen one rotary air blast (RAB) drill hole, which cut 28 metres grading 1.1 grams gold per tonne.
The third zone at Kantela centres on an outcrop showing where quartz vein material in an argillite host rock returned gold grades of 40-50 grams per tonne. This showing, also, has had a RAB hole poked in it, where a 20-metre length graded 6 grams per tonne. North Atlantic will be trenching there as well.
On the Diokeba property, North Atlantic has performed a soil-geochemical survey on a 200-by-100-metre grid, filling in an earlier reconnaissance-level soil survey on a 1,000-by-250-metre grid. North Atlantic’s survey indicated a soil anomaly defined by a threshold concentration of 16 parts per billion (0.016 gram per tonne), with peak values of 1,017 parts per billion in the north and 830 ppb in the south. Anomaly A, in the north, is about 4 km by 1 km; the southern Anomaly B is a cluster about 2.6 km by 1.5 km.
Pitting and more detailed soil sampling are planned for both geochemical targets.
North Atlantic also has properties in the southern part of Mali’s Birimian shield, an area that is seeing considerable work. At one property, Sinzeni, 50 km south of Morila, a southwest-trending magnetic anomaly has been interpreted as being a splay from the regional shear zone that hosts Morila.
North Atlantic’s second property, Dalakan, is 250 km south of Bamako and 25 km southeast of the Kalana gold mine, which produced about 16,000 oz. gold annually between 1984 and 1991. There, North Atlantic tightened up the coverage of previous reconnaissance-scale soil geochemistry, outlining two zones of anomalous gold concentration.
Kalana itself is due to resume production under the management of British-based private company Avnel Gold, which paid US$2 million for the former
Another dormant producer, Kodieran, near the border with Guinea and about 100 km northeast of Ashanti’s Siguiri gold mine, has been dealt to Montreal-based
Not far away from Kodieran,
Afri-Ore’s earn-in requires it to spend US$2.5 million on the property, or provide a bankable feasibility study, by September 2006.
Banankoro is another centre of orpailleur activi
ty, where New Gold Mali has drilled off a 700-metre-long mineralized zone to a depth of 120 metres.
Farther to the east, Randgold Resources is still looking for a buyer for its share of the Syama gold mine, which was shut down in 2001. But 30 km to the north, Afcan has been granted a permit called Loubougoulou, formerly held by Moroccan mining company Managem. Afcan will be mapping and sampling on the property, and performing geophysical and geochemical surveys; the permit is good for nine months.
Finkolo, part of the original Syama exploration concession, was drilled by BHP in the 1990s, and some mineralization is known to exist in high-grade veins and in pyritic disseminations in mafic volcanic rocks, a geological setting not too unlike that found at at Syama.
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