Reservoir finding gold in Cameroon

Early stage exploration results from Reservoir Minerals (RMC-V) were strong enough to capture investor’s imaginations of a big find in Cameroon.

The company said the second phase of soil sampling campaign at its Bibemi Exploration License in the northern part of the country found gold anomalous soil samples over a strike length of 11 km.

A day after releasing the news, on Aug. 2, the company’s shares shot up 24¢ or 17% to $1.68 on heavy volume of 560,760 shares traded. That represented a new 52-week high for Reservoir.

The newly outlined strike length runs across Archean greenstone terrain that was identified by an earlier stream sediment sampling campaign, the results of which cane out at the beginning of July.

At that time, Reservoir said that gold anomalous stream sediment samples combined with mapping of seasonal artisanal workings helped to define three anomalous areas in the Archean greenstone terrain over a strike length of 35-km.

The latest findings focus on 11-km of northeast by southwest trending strike within that broader zone but the company continues to test other areas within the 35 km strike. Reservoir says the gold anomaly is proximal and runs parallel to a topographic ridgeline.

Such a long strike length is one of the benefits of controlling such a large swath of land as the Bibemi License covers 1,000 sq km in Cameroon.

The property includes under-explored Archean greenstone formations and several sites of seasonal artisanal gold workings.

As for the samples, a total of 2,275 soil samples were collected on a 200 spaced metre grid. The company also said it discovered a second gold anomalous zone roughly 4-km east of the main trend that covers roughly 1 sq km.

The next step is to cut trenches down to the bedrock in the areas defined by gold in soil anomalies as it seeks to determine the source of the gold.

In January of this year Reservoir signed an option agreement with a government agency to take a 90% stake in the project, with the government holding the remaining 10%. As part of the agreement the company has to pay $ 85,000 over a two year period, refund prior exploration costs of up to $10,000 and spend $4 million on exploration by 2022.