Global gold company Chalice Gold Mines has upgraded the regional 
exploration potential at its 80%-owned 944 000-oz Zara gold project, in Eritrea, East Africa, after completing the first phase of a regional exploration programme.

Chalice retained remote sensing con-sultant Earthscan to undertake an inter-pretation of satellite imagery covering the Proterozoic sedimentary and volcanic formations in north-western Eritrea, the prospective stratigraphy which hosts the Koka and Bisha deposits.

The study area, covering over 
35 000 km2, centred on the company’s 
615-km2 Zara project, which is located 
165 km north of the capital, Asmara.

Satellite company Landsat’s enhanced 
thematic mapper satellite data was computer-enhanced to highlight geological outcrops, regolith landforms, structural features and mineral alteration zones within the study area, which lies along major north-west-trending structural corridors.

Signatures of known gold and base metal mineral occurrences were used to identify similar signatures elsewhere within the targeted terrains. 
The target zones were then ranked using various parameters.

Within the Zara project area, the inter-pretation identified over 60 anomalies with spectral signatures indicative of alteration or iron enrichment commonly associated with known gold or base metals mineralisation in the region, including the company’s Koka gold deposit. 
The anomalies are indicative of gold or base metal targets on the 615-km2 tenement area outside the current resource base at the Koka deposit, with an indicated and inferred resource of 5,04-million tons at 
5,8 g/t gold for 944 000 oz of ore.

This provides a strong pipeline of regional exploration opportunities with
the potential to yield new discoveries
within a 25-km radius of a potential 
future mining operation at Zara, where Chalice is currently completing a scoping study.

Iron-rich anomalies were also interpreted within the newly granted Zara South permit, where ground follow-up has identified large iron-oxide-rich rocks derived from the weathering of massive sulphides, called gossans. 
The gossans are associated with altered and pyritised rhyolites and cherty pyritic exhalites in a rock assemblage typical of volcanic-hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) mineralisation. 
It lies within interpreted northerly extensions of the volcanic stratigraphy, hosting the Bisha polymetallic VHMS deposit, about 100 km to the south.

Chalice Gold plans to progress with the evaluation, ranking and exploration of the 
regional targets. 
Immediate exploration plans include the acquisition and analysis of high-resolution Aster satellite imagery, geological mapping and regional drainage geochemical sampling.

The regional exploration strategy will be advanced together with forthcoming programmes of infill and resource exten-sion drilling at the Koka deposit, as well as the completion of the prefeasibility and feasibility studies.