Gold Fields to pour US$9.3M into Essakane

South African mining house Gold Fields (GFI-N, GOF-L, GOGOF-J) has budgeted US$9.3 million for exploration and pre-feasibility work on the Essakane project in northeastern Burkina Faso, a joint venture with Orezone Resources (OZN-T, OZN-X). The new budget will cover activities until September.

Gold Fields, which can earn a 60% interest in Essakane by bringing the project through a final feasibility study, has earmarked most of the budget for resource drilling on the Main Zone at Essakane, which has an indicated resource of 49 million tonnes at an average gold grade of 1.5 grams per tonne. Three drills are now working on the Main Zone doing infill holes and testing extensions of the known mineralization.

A part of the budget has been reserved for outside exploration on the Essakane concession, including resource drilling on the Falagountou prospect and target drilling on two other occurrences, Gossey and Sokadie.

Following metallurgical test work that showed coarse gold at Essakane may not have been completely leached in earlier large-sample tests, and that small-sample fire assays may have understated the grades, Gold Fields plans a re-analysis program on about 20,000 stored samples.

A revised resource estimate, which will take about 100,000 metres of new drilling into account, is in the works. Gold Fields plans a pre-feasibility study for this year and has scheduled a final feasibility study for 2007.