Aim-listed Oriole Resources and joint venture partner Iamgold Corporation will shortly restart a 10 000 m air core drilling programme at the Senala project, in Senegal, following seasonal rains.
Iamgold had completed 1 300 m of the programme at the northernmost Faré prospect before the rains started and would resume the programme later this month.
Iamgold intends to report initial results from the programme in the first quarter next year.
Under the terms of the option agreement between Oriole and Iamgold, Iamgold is approaching the end of its year three commitment to spend up to $8-million to earn a 70% interest in the Senala project.
Iamgold must spend a further $1-million by the end of February 2021 to keep the option in good standing.
Oriole states that, ahead of the new results next year, the company had recalculated all historic reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling results for the Faré prospect from Stratex International’s programmes in 2013 and 2014 and found the best results to include 20 m grading 31.13 g/t gold, including 10 m grading 60.08 g/t gold from RC drilling, and 59.5 m grading 2.2 g/t gold from diamond drilling.
Based on these results alone, Oriole believes the Faré prospect has already shown potential for the development of a significant gold resource.
“As we have seen from recent drilling on other licences in the immediate surrounds of Senala, long intercepts with grades well above 2 g/t gold can quickly build the types of volumes required for standalone mineable resources,” says Oriole CEO Tim Livesey.