West Africa-focused gold producer Shanta Gold has converted 82 700 oz, grading 10.62 g/t, into indicated resources at its Isulu site, and 34 900 oz, grading 3.92 g/t, to indicated resources at the Bushiangala site of its West Kenya project, in Kenya.

Prior to this resource update, total inferred resources at Bushiangala amounted to 122 000 oz grading 9.9 g/t, and the inferred resource at Isulu amounted to 1.06-million ounces grading 13 g/t.

The West Kenya project covers 1 162 km² of the highly prospective and underexplored greenstone Archaean Busia-Kakamega gold belt in western Kenya, where Shanta is drilling the Isulu and Bushiangala deposits in an effort to upgrade ounces from the project’s National Instrument 43-101-compliant inferred mineral resource estimate into the indicated resource category.

The company is doing this down to a depth of 600 m across three drilling phases.

Phase 1 drilling at the project, completed in June, sought to infill two modelled zones at Isulu (IZ1 and IZ3) and two modelled zones at Bushiangala (BZ2 and BZ3).

This drilling was carried out to generate an average spacing of 40 m at Isulu and 30 m at Bushiangala, up to a depth of between 150 m and 220 m from surface, and targeted both oxides and fresh rock within these zones.

In total, 117 600 oz have been converted to the indicated category and 21 600 oz added in the inferred category, with cut-off grades applied of 1 g/t of gold for oxidised rock and 3 g/t of gold for fresh rock.

About 106 000 oz of inferred resource is being targeted in Phase 2 drilling for potential conversion to indicated for Bushiangala and about 994 000 oz of inferred resource is being targeted in Phase 2 drilling for potential conversion to indicated for Isulu.

Shanta reports that infill drilling and model updates of both Isulu and Bushiangala have resulted in an increase in reported ounces, reflecting both the addition of newly identified ounces to previously known zones and the modification of existing zones. This, the producer says, will better reflect the high-grade mineralisation contained within shear zones previously identified.

A change of cut-off grades also contributed to the increase of the reported ounces of Bushiangala. Recent drilling at both sites has added numerous high-grade intervals, both within and outside of previously modelled zones, indicating that there are other gold-bearing structures which will be included in the next model and resource update.

CEO Eric Zurrin says the company is particularly excited about the high-grade nature of the orebody at Isulu, which has contributed to a conversion rate of over 100% following new discovered zones during infill drilling.

“While we have made real progress in West Kenya in such a short amount of time, our Phase 2 drilling programme is ongoing, targeting zones between 200 m and 500 m, and additional upside from high-grade intersections already identified in Phase 2 between [surface level] to 400 m,” he says.

Going forward, Zurrin says Shanta remains focused on proceeding swiftly to fast-track this project to development and production, with 30% to 45% of total planned drilling at West Kenya to be completed by the end of this year.

In addition, he says exploration continues to underpin Shanta’s growth strategy and with an extensive portfolio of increasingly high-grade exploration assets to complement its production and development portfolio across Tanzania and West Kenya, the company’s outlook is the strongest it has been in the history of Shanta.