Africa-focused Altus Strategies has defined a series of drill targets to test the potential of expanding the Diba gold project, strategically located 13 km south of the multimillion-ounce Sadiola gold mine in the Kenieba Window gold belt in Mali.
The project hosts a near-surface, shallow dipping, historic oxide resource with a number of “exceptional” drill intersects, including 5.02 g/t gold over 20 m and 1.85 g/t gold over 51.8 m.
Further drill targets have been defined along strike, down dip and in new zones.
Diba hosts an historic near-surface gold resource, with 6.35-million tonnes at 1.35 g/t for 275 200 oz in the indicated category and 720 000 t at 1.40 g/t for 32 500 oz in the inferred category, based on a 0.5 g/t cut-off and a gold price of $1 200/oz.
Altus is currently engaged in discussions with a number of potential joint venture partners and other groups to advance the Diba project.
While Diba has the potential to provide oxide feed to the adjacent Sadiola gold mine, the company also considers it to have considerable significant standalone oxide potential, Altus CE Steven Poulton said on Monday.
Sadiola mine is reportedly for sale and is expected to have exhausted its oxide feed in the coming months, he indicated.
“Our detailed review of the historic data from Diba has defined a number of priority drill targets, which when tested have the potential to increase the existing historic resource,” said Poulton.
“One of the targets, at Diba Northwest, is located within a 2.6 km2 soil anomaly immediately along strike and northwest of the current historic resource. Systematic air core drilling of this area only tested to an average depth of 14.7 m.
However, a number of the holes terminated in gold mineralisation. A second, 2 km2 target at Diba East is located immediately to the east of the historic resource and is defined by the results from geophysics, air core and reverse circulation drilling.”