Orezone Beefs Up Bombor

Orezone Resources (OZN-T, OZN-x) has nearly tripled gold resources at the Bombor project in Burkina Faso to nearly 926,000 indicated oz. and 1.78 million inferred oz.

Indicated resources are contained in 49.4 million tonnes grading 0.59 gram gold per tonne, while inferred resources are contained in 91.8 million tonnes grading 0.61 gram gold.

The estimate, which Orezone says represents the second-largest gold resource in the country, is based on nearly 20,000 metres of reverse-circulation drilling (268 holes) and 5,700 metres of diamond drilling (57 holes), completed before May 2007.

Mineralization has been detected from surface to a depth of 100 metres, though Orezone president Pascal Marquis says there’s a lot of potential to further increase resources.

“(We) have not exhausted the near-surface oxide targets, so there remains tremendous potential to significantly increase resources again with more drilling,” Marquis said in a statement.

The resource is contained in five separate deposits that lie along a 14- gold-in-soil anomaly– the largest gold anomaly in Burkina Faso, Orezone says.

A cutoff grade of 0.24 gram gold per tonne was used for oxide material, 0.25 gram gold for transition material and 0.52 gram gold for fresh material. A cap of 5 grams gold per tonne was also used.

Atechnical review completed last June showed Bombor mineralization had an average recovery of more than 90% for oxide material. Cyanide processing of oxide samples without coarse gold was found to be leachable in 12-24 hours.

Bombor is located about 80 km east of the capital, Ouagadougou, in a flat-lying area with a low population density.

Orezone’s main project is Essakane, also in Burkina Faso. Essakane hosts an indicated resource of more than 4 million oz. gold and an inferred resource of 1.3 million oz.

Orezone shares were unchanged on the resource news at 20.5 apiece on a trading volume of 1.4 million shares. The company has a 52-week trading range of 15-$1.85 and 358.2 million shares outstanding.