Gold exploration and development company Panthera Resources, which owns assets in India and West Africa, has been granted a new exploration licence, replacing and considerably extending the tenure of the Kalaka licence, in Mali.

The replacement Kalaka licence has been granted for an initial period of three years, starting on December 31, 2018, with two possible two-year extensions, taking the total likely tenure period to seven years.

The new licence has been granted to Panthera’s local 100% owned subsidiary company Panthera Mali Resources on behalf of its joint venture partners.

“The granting of this licence gives Panthera a meaningfully longer period of tenure and allows us to confidently follow up on the successful generative geophysics work we have undertaken,” Panthera MD Geoff Stanley commented in a statement on Monday.

“The gold mineralised system identified at Kalaka is clearly extensive (greater than 1 km in length) and continuous and we now appear to have a targeting mechanism that we postulate has identified the highest-grade areas of the system. We plan on testing this anomaly with deep drilling as soon as practical.”

BHUKIA PERMITTING UPDATE

Panthera also provided an update on delayed court proceedings pertaining to its Bhukia project, in India.

As previously reported by the company, the recent Rajasthan state elections resulted in a change of government. Following this change, a new Attorney General and Associate Attorney General were appointed for the state in mid-January.

The government’s response to Panthera’s recent writ petition requires review by the new appointees prior to submission to the court.

While the government’s response was due within four weeks of the September 26, 2018 court hearing where its writ petition was admitted and stay protection granted, the company anticipates further intermittent delays as the court is likely to provide the government leniency following the election and change of administration.

In the meantime, the company has begun the process of engaging with the new administration with a view to negotiating the grant of the Bhukia prospecting licence.