https://www.miningweekly.com

Aura sees multimillion-ounce gold potential in Mauritania

27th June 2016

By: Mariaan Webb

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor Online

  

Font size: - +

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Australian junior Aura Energy on Monday announced that it had secured rights to acquire two exploration permits in Mauritania, which were along strike from Canadian firm Kinross’s  major Tasiast gold mine.

Aura chairperson Peter Reeve said that the company’s technical team, which was well acquainted with the area, believed the two areas covering 175 km2 were underexplored and held the potential for multimillion-ounce discoveries.

“It is almost an anachronism in these days of modern exploration to find an extremely underexplored Greenstone belt in a mining friendly country with such high-quality preliminary gold exploration results,” he said.

The prospects covered portions of the Tasiast and Tijirit Greenstone belts and had only been explored previously by one other company, which was forced to suspend activities in the mineral industry downturn in 2012.

Aura’s chief geologist, Neil Clifford, led the previous exploration in these areas. He had played key roles in the discovery of at least nine major mineral deposits in Australia, South America and Africa, for a variety of commodities including gold, uranium and copper. These discoveries included 20-million ounces of gold, including Sunrise Dam, and seven had subsequently become mines.

“The Tasiast gold mineralisation is in Archean greenstones with strong similarities in terms of rock types, structures and mineralisation style with the great gold provinces in the Archean belts of Australia and Canada in which there have been many hundreds of gold mines. In the Tasiast district there has only been one discovery, reflecting how little explored this belt is. Clearly, the potential for additional and substantial discoveries in the Tasiast district is very high,” Clifford said in a statement. 

The project was located about 200 km from Aura’s Nouakchott office and could be managed within the company’s existing management resources.

“We will not be distracted from our core focus in Mauritania, which remains getting the Tiris uranium project into production as soon as possible. However, we are very comfortable that, given our extensive knowledge of Mauritania, the association of our technical people with the project and the fact that it can be managed from existing resources, this presents a high-quality opportunity in a country we know well and rate highly as a mining destination,” Reeve added.

LONDON LISTING
Aura, which would pay $100 000 for the permits in four stages over a 12-month period, would consider a listing on London’s Aim market to fund the project. Other fundraising mechanisms, including joint ventures, royalties and work-for-equity funding, were also under consideration.

If Aura defined an indicated resource of greater than one-million ounces, the company would make a further payment to the vendor of $250 000. A royalty of $5/oz on gold and a 0.4% net smelter royalty on other commodities would be payable on production from the permits. This was capped at $5-million.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

Comments

Showroom

GreaseMax
GreaseMax

GreaseMax is a chemically operated automatic lubricator.

VISIT SHOWROOM 
Multotec
Multotec

Multotec, recognised industry leaders in metallurgy and process engineering help mining houses across the world process minerals more efficiently,...

VISIT SHOWROOM 

Latest Multimedia

sponsored by

Hyphen, Eva mine, ferrochrome price make headlines
Hyphen, Eva mine, ferrochrome price make headlines
27th March 2024
Resources Watch
Resources Watch
27th March 2024

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION







sq:0.072 0.109s - 90pq - 2rq
Subscribe Now