AFRICA — SEMAFO advances exploration at Perkoa in Burkina Faso

Quebec-based West Africa Mining Exploration (SMF-T) is set to begin a drill program at its Perkoa gold property, in west-central Burkina Faso.

The property, which was acquired by the junior last May, comprises four contiguous permits covering 2,024-sq.-km of the Boromo greenstone belt.

Previous exploration on the property was conducted by the United Nations, which outlined the Perkoa area. The prospect area contains numerous soil geochemical anomalies and measures 4 km in length and 500 metres in width.

Subsequent trenching and reverse-circulation drilling there returned favorable results; one drill hole intersected 12 metres of quartz veining grading 3 grams gold.

At the property to date, the Montreal-based junior, also known as SEMAFO, has completed an airborne geophysical survey, collected 350 stream-sediment samples for gold analysis with cyanide leaching and mapped the southern portion of the area. Results from the geochemical samples are pending.

Geologically, the mapped area is underlain by felsic tuffs and graphitic shales in contact with basaltic volcanic rocks. The tuffaceous volcanics are intruded by small-scale granitic dykes. There is also an abundance of quartz float (eroded bedrock), suggesting the possibility of a hydrothermal event.

Drilling will begin once targets from the geophysical survey have been chosen.

SEMAFO is exploring 17 properties covering 11,000 sq. km in Burkina Faso.

Elsewhere, the company is exploring its fully owned, advanced-stage Teleku-Bokazo and Jean-Gobele gold properties, situated in Ghana and Guinea, respectively. SEMAFO is also exploring in Ivory Coast.