Canadian mineral exploration company Thor Explorations has reported an encouraging set of drill results from the southern Makosa Tail prospect at its Douta project, in Senegal.

The Douta gold project has a north-east- trending permit that covers an area of 103 km2 and is located within the Kéniéba inlier, in eastern Senegal.

“We are thrilled with these drill results. We are particularly pleased with the uplift in the grade of the intersections, which are all in a previously untested area,” says Thor Explorations president and CEO Segun Lawson.

“The Makosa Tail prospect is open to the north and possibly to the south and we look forward to investigating if the mineralisation extends to the Makosa mineralised system.

“Makosa as a whole continues to grow with our drilling and understanding of the geology and we are excited about the next phase of drilling scheduled to start this month.”

The exploratory drilling programme was designed to test the mineralisation along strike and down dip from the mineralisation delineated from previous drill programmes on Makosa.

The results received to date confirm the continuation of the Makosa mineralised system along strike to the south.

Thor, through its wholly owned subsidiary African Star Resources has acquired 70% of the licence from the permit holder International Mining Company (IMC).

IMC has a 30% free carry until Thor announces a Probable Reserve.

Lawson adds that the Douta licence is strategically positioned 4 km east of the Massawa North and Massawa Central deposits, which form part of the Sabadola-Massawa project owned by the Teranga Gold Corporation.

Further, in late 2020 a total of 1 567 m of drilling was completed in 21 reverse circulation (RC) drill holes over the Makosa Tail prospect to test for possible southern extensions of the Makosa mineralised system.

The RC programme was completed using a line spacing of 100 m over the northern parts of Makosa Tail and 200 m spaced reconnaissance sections towards the south. The holes averaged 74 m in length with the deepest hole completed to 100 m.

Drill samples were analysed by ALS Laboratories in Mali using the AA26 fire assay method (50 g charge).

The results indicate up to four parallel, steep north-westerly dipping, mineralised horizons that are developed within a shale/greywacke sequence. Most significant is the discovery of several higher grade zones towards the southern end of the drilled area where the drill coverage is wide-spaced.

Drillhole DTRC145 returned 5 m at 6.90 g/t gold from 15 m. The same mineralised horizon was intersected 200 m to the south by hole DTRC149 which returned 5 m at 14.38 g/t gold from 36 m.

On the northern-most section hole DTRC138 returned patchy low-grade mineralisation from 18 m to 79 m down-hole and the nearby hole DTRC139 returned 5 m grading 1.88 g/t gold from 31 m downhole.

Together, the results from these two holes indicate a continuation of mineralisation to the north towards Makosa prospect. There is about 1 600 m of untested strike length between Makosa Tail and Makosa, says Lawson.

He points out that the two holes, DTRC152 and DTRC153 on the southern-most section, returned no significant result. This means that further drilling in this area is required to achieve full drill coverage to confirm whether not the mineralised system is closed off or whether the mineralised zone has been displaced by late-stage faulting.

Additionally, the Makosa Tail drilling has intersected multiple parallel lodes over a strike length of 1 000 m with a higher grade zone potentially extending for 300 m.

Significantly, there is a 1 600 m strike length between Makosa Tail and Makosa that is yet to be drill-tested. Lawson concludes that for this programme, systematic infill and step-out drilling is planned to fully assess the ever-increasing scale of the project.