London-listed Scotgold announced on Thursday that it would not extend the Pomar exploration licence in Portugal, and that it had applied to terminate the licence.
This follows the earlier falling through of an earn-in agreement that Scotgold had with South African exploration firm PanEx.
Scotgold said that it continued to believe in the potential of the Pomar licence, but said that the exploration results to date, including the most recent soil sampling, suggested a significant further work programme would be required to realise this potential.
"Our belief in the potential of this licence and our positive experiences in Portugal made this a hard decision. Our critical focus at this time, however, has to be the development of the Cononish Project and securing positive cashflow in 2020. This will enable us to accelerate our exploration activities in Scotland and ultimately reconsider other opportunities in similar low political risk jurisdictions,” commented CEO Richard Gray.
PanEx withdrew from the earn-in agreement in February this year, after failing to validate a significant openpittable gold resource in the felsic dykes. The exploration company did not address mineralisation hosted in structures or the broader untested exploration potential along the margin of a granite intrusion.