Vancouver — Vancouver-based
The property, in which Great Quest is earning a 95% interest, comprises 32 sq. km adjacent to the southern border of
Kenieba is in a 7-km long area of pits dug by local gold miners. The density of these pits has made it difficult to space out any new pits evenly. “The deepest pit I know of is forty metres,” says Great Quest President Willis Osborne. “That’s how they [local miners] mine the gold — by digging pits about one metre in diameter; then the women pull the material up and pan it on surface.”
The area is underlain by a 20-metre-wide rhyodacite dyke in a north-south silicified shear zone. East-west-striking quartz veins up to 4 metres wide crosscut the dyke in a 200-metre zone. The veins appear to be discontinuous along strike.
The north-south-trending zone was tested over a 392-metre distance by digging 24 pits. Results ranged from 0.49 gram gold per tonne (from diorite) to 180 grams per tonne, from a northeast-trending quartz vein. The northeast- and east-west-trending quartz veins returned the highest grades. Rejects from around some of the mined-out pits contained high gold grades also.
As part of Great West’s program, local miners dug the soft saprolitic material to depths of 10-12 metres below surface. A sample is collected from the base of the pits, half of which is sent for analysis and half of which is panned for gold.
More mapping and sampling are planned, to be followed by drilling.
The Kenieba concession is east of the Kabaya 1 area, where recent sampling turned up gold values. The Kabaya 1 covers a 400-by-100 metre area of locally dug pits in a 1,600-metre-long zone of anomalous gold-in-soils. Nearby is the Kabaya 2 area, which consists of a 400-by-3-to-6-metre dyke with gold-bearing quartz veins and a 1,200-metre-long gold-in-soil anomaly.
Meanwhile, construction is under way at Nevsun’s Tabakoto mine. Last month, Metallurgical Design & Management of South Africa was awarded the construction contract for the mill and associated infrastructure.
At the prefeasibility stage, Tabakoto was estimated to have an indicated resource of 5.6 million tonnes grading 7.5 grams gold per tonne (primary material) plus 535,000 tonnes of 1.8 grams gold (in oxide), for a total gold resource equivalent to 1.9 million oz. The inferred resource totals 2.1 million tonnes grading 7.64 grams gold (sulphide material).
The deposit is envisaged as a 650,000-tonne-per-year open-pit mine from which 105,400 oz. gold annually would be produced over a life of five years. The average grade is projected to be 5.45 grams gold, with a recovery rate of 96%. Cash operating costs would likely be US$230-250 per oz., while the internal rate of return is pegged at 20% at a gold price of US$400 per oz.
Nevsun says surface resources on the property could extend the mine life by two years.
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