ERIC EWEN The initial exploration manager for Asante’s southern former PMI Gold Asankrangwa properties
Canadian gold explorer Asante Gold has appointed professional prospector Eric Ewen, a veteran in the exploration and discovery of gold and base metals in Canada and West Africa, with historical links to the company’s Ghanaian projects, as a consultant and adviser to its board of directors.
Asante welcomes Ewen’s “keen prospecting talents” to its advisory board as it continues to explore and develop projects in Ghana, such as its southern former PMI Gold Asankrangwa properties for which Ewen was the initial exploration manager.
PMI’s principal properties include the Obotan gold project, which comprises the Nkran, Adubiaso, Abore and Asuadai deposits, located in the Asankrangwa gold belt region.
The company is also focused on its highly prospective Keyhole and Betenase options, all adjoining or along strike of major gold mines near the centre of Ghana’s Golden Triangle, as well as its Kubi Gold 50:50 joint venture (JV) with power supply company BXC Ghana.
The JV aims to develop the Kubi mining leases as a potential near-term underground mine.
Ewen, to whom Asanate has granted 200 000 incentive options at a price of $0.20 a share for five years, graduated from the Haileybury School of Mines, in Ontario, in 1972.
In 1999, Asante Gold president Douglas MacQuarrie grubstaked Ewen with $2 000 to see what properties in Ghana were available for acquisition.
As a result, gold exploration company Goknet Mining was incorporated in 2000, with MacQuarrie as CEO, together with its MD Godfried Kesse and London- and Accra-based barrister and solicitor Thomas Ennison.
By 2002, Goknet had acquired interests in eight contiguous prospecting licences along the lesser known Asankrangwa gold belt.
These properties were ultimately vended into junior exploration company PMI Gold, which, under the direction of MacQuarrie, and with the assistance of Goknet, went on to acquire Kubi, formerly known as Obotan, and an additional four prospecting licences.
PMI Gold was acquired by Asanko (formerly known as Keegan Resources) in 2014 for $173-million in shares.
Ewen was Keegan Resources Ghana MD from 2005 to 2010. During this period, he was instrumental in Keegan’s acquisition of the Bonte Gold mining lease, a former alluvial gold mining operation located just north of Obotan.
He started widespread soil sampling lines, prospecting for the bedrock source of the alluvial gold, and is credited with the discovery of and the drilling of the Esaase gold deposit, which is the subject of the Phase 2 expansion of the Asanko gold mine (Obotan).
The geological resource base for the two projects is about 11-million ounces of gold.