Exploration campaign at Sierra Leone gold prospect intercepts mineralisation in 70% of drillholes
The exploration programme at multicommodity exploration and development company Sula Iron & Gold’s Sierra Leone-based Ferensola gold project has encountered gold mineralisation in 70% of the drillholes in an area measuring about 25% of the defined exploration target.
Drilling has identified multiple subparallel mineralised shears over a strike length of about 350 m, while the total length-weighted grade equates to 4.48 g/t of gold at a thickness of 0.35 m to 7.1 m and averaging 1.5 m, according to a company statement released in January.
“A multiplicity of mineralised shear zones is highly significant for potential opencast and selective underground mining,” Sula Iron & Gold CEO Nick Warrell noted in the company statement.
Additionally, six goldstone samples and one quartz-pyrite float sample from up to 2 km outside the exploration target have returned average grades of 8.4 g/t of gold and 69.2 g/t of gold respectively and highlight additional licence-scale mineralisation potential. These samples are believed to be part of the same geological setting and derived from high-grade basement structures, and, therefore, the 153 km2 project “hosts a major deposit of significant [high-grade] tonnage”, according to Warrell.
Sula Iron & Gold’s operational targets for this year, as set out in the company’s preliminary results report for the year ended September 30, 2015, are to progress exploration on the Ferensola gold project, specifically additional drilling on the exploration target.
The company aims to secure a joint venture partner for the project to fund and progress it to bankable feasibility-study stage .
The company announced last month that it conditionally raised about £0.3-million through the placing of new shares to assist in delivering its targets for 2016.
In addition to the Batch 1 assay results announced on December 14, 2015, all the remaining assay results from the recent drilling campaign on Sula Iron & Gold’s 100%-owned flagship project have now been received.
Highlights of the assay results include drillhole FDD005 returning assay results of up to 12.05 g/t of gold from eight separate mineralised zones, with the estimated true thicknesses varying from 0.4 m to 1.4 m, while gold mineralisation greater than 0.5 g/t of gold was intersected within seven of the ten drillholes completed.
SRK Consulting UK previously defined an independent Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant gold exploration target for the project, with a tonnage range of between five-million tonnes and seven-million tonnes at a grade range of between 4 g/t and 8 g/t of gold, which equates to between 0.8-million ounces and 1.5-million ounces of gold.
The exploration target has been restricted to a 2 km strike length segment of a regional fold belt that has a potential overall strike length greater than 10 km.
With regard to the previously announced exploration target for the project, Sula Iron & Gold completed an extended 1 500 m diamond drilling campaign of ten drillholes to test the grade and continuity of mineralisation and assess the most appropriate drilling orientation for the project.
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