Guinor drill results hint at pit expansion

Drilling by Guinor Gold (GNR-T) at the Lero gold mine in eastern Guinea has encountered new zones of gold mineralization both below two existing pits and along strike from known resources.

Lero, which Guinor (then named Kenor, and domiciled in Norway) acquired from the French state agency Bureau de Recherches Gologiques et Minires in 1998, produced 92,733 oz. of gold last year from the Lero Karta and Fayalala open pits. Guinor is running a program of exploration around the pits to expand the known resources and to convert resources to reserves.

At Lero Karta, drilling along strike from the known mineralized zones encountered new gold mineralization as far away as 220 metres from the north end of the current resource envelope. Other drill holes intersected mineralization at depth with grades mainly in the 3- to 6-gram range.

Drilling at Fayalala concentrated on outlining new resources in areas with difficult access, which had previously been left undrilled. Most of the new intersections were 5 metres to 23 metres in length, with gold grades typically 3 to 5 grams per tonne.

Regional exploration on the Dinguiraye mining concession included work at four new prospects, Siguirini, Bouremfe, Sikasso, and Diguili South. At Siguirini, 9 km north of Fayalala, three “fences” of shallow air-core drill holes returned gold grades in the 4- to 8-gram range, mainly over drilled lengths of 2 to 12 metres.

Nearby gold mineralization at Bouremfe, was lower-grade, around 2.5 grams per tonne, and narrower, 2 to 4 metres. At Sikasso, 7 km south of Fayalala, trench samples from small-scale gold workings returned grades that locally ran as high as 29.2 grams gold per tonne.

At Diguili South, 25 km southwest of Lero Karta, a single air-core hole intersected what the company described as “minor quartz veining and weak shearing.” It did, however, return a 2-metre interval that graded 23.8 grams gold per tonne..