Lithium and gold explorer and developer Kodal Minerals reports that its mining licence application for the Bougouni project has now been forwarded from the Mali Ministry of Mines, Energy and Water, to the Secretary General’s office for final review prior to presentation at the Conseil des Ministres.

Kodal CEO Bernard Aylward says the Bougouni lithium project’s mining licence application is now in the final stages of approval. 

Kodal notes that it has been informed that all is progressing as expected.

In addition, Kodal has received the results of its air core drilling campaign at its Nielle gold concession, in northern Côte d'Ivoire, where wide-spaced drill traverses confirm a 4.5 km gold mineralised trend with extensions of up to 1.5 km south and over 1 km north.

Thus far, the drilling reveals significant anomalism, including mineralisation for 2 m at 675 parts per billion (ppb) of gold from 26 m end of hole in drill hole NLAC295. This also includes mineralisation of 1 m at 1 140 ppb of gold from 26 m.

One hundred parts per billion of gold equals 0.1 g/t.

Aylward says that Kodal’s first gold exploration drilling campaign at the Nielle concession has been very successful. “The reverse circulation drilling returned high-grade gold mineralisation and now our reconnaissance air core drilling is demonstrating major strike extensions as well as additional parallel zones of mineralisation.”

Further, drill hole NLAC230 returned 6 m of mineralisation at 240 ppb of gold from 18 m, while drill hole NLAC277 found gold mineralisation of 1 m at 780 ppb from 21 m.

Kodal states that the air core drill results are consistent with the initial reconnaissance drilling that discovered the Nielle mineralised zone.

As such, Kodal’s recent drilling campaign has successfully extended the Nielle gold mineralised trend as well as confirmed high-grade gold mineralisation.

“The Nielle prospect is at an early stage, however, the results received so far have given encouragement as to the possible resource potential here. Further exploration drilling will be undertaken later this year with the objective of delivering a maiden mineral resource estimate,” says Aylward.