Mariana Resources acquires
 first African project

Mariana Resources (TSX: MRY) is on the verge of releasing a preliminary economic assessment of its Hot Maden joint-venture gold-copper project in Turkey and gearing up for a mid-year field season with its assets in Argentina, but, still, the company’s ambitious management team has decided to acquire another gold exploration project — this time in West Africa.

The Australian junior announced in the first week of October that it is taking an 80% stake in Awale Resources, a private exploration company with gold projects in Côte d’Ivoire, marking Mariana’s first investment in Africa.

Awale’s Bondoukou concessions are situated in northeastern Côte d’Ivoire’s Zanzan region and are accessible from Bondoukou, a town close to the Ghana border.

People touring Mariana Resources’ flagship Hot Maden gold-copper project in northeastern Turkey. Credit: Mariana Resources.

The concessions lie along the southwestern extension of the Birimian-age, Bole-Nangodi greenstone belt in neighbouring Ghana, which hosts high-grade, orogenic-type gold deposits.

Mariana says it will focus on the Bondoukou Est (east) concession, where high-grade gold mineralization (up to 36 grams gold per tonne from initial sampling) appears within a sheeted quartz vein complex at the contact between a zoned granitoid intrusion and the host meta-volcanic and meta-sedimentary rocks.

Artisanal miners are active at Bondoukou Est, mining to 30 metres deep from higher-grade quartz veins that lie within a northwest to southeast mineralized corridor with an 18 km strike, the company says.

The diversified junior’s flagship project, however, remains Hot Maden, a high-grade, gold-copper asset in northeastern Turkey, where it owns a 30% stake and a Turkish exploration company called Lidya owns 70%. Lidya completed its earn-in in January and is the operator.

Lidya is probably better known in the industry for its joint-venture with Alacer Gold (TSX: ASR; ASX: AQG) at the Copler gold mine in eastern Turkey, which could produce 150,000 to 170,000 oz. gold this year at total cash costs of US$575 to US$625 per oz. gold.

Lidya is part of the Calik Group, one of Turkey’s largest private conglomerates, with interests that extend beyond mining to include energy, finance, construction, textiles, telecoms and media.

“It is a really strong Turkish partner,” Glen Parsons, Mariana’s president and CEO, said during a presentation at the Precious Metals Summit in Beaver Creek, Colo., last September. “They have driven exploration and are driving development.”

Mariana announced a discovery at Hot Maden in February 2015, and 17 drill holes later, in August 2015, released its first resource estimate of 3 million equivalent oz. gold, on a combined basis.

In July 2016, with 62 drill holes, Mariana upgraded the resource estimate.

Hot Maden’s indicated resource in the Main Zone, at a 2 gram gold-equivalent cut-off grade, stands at 7.1 million tonnes grading 12.2 grams gold per tonne, 2.3% copper and 0.2% zinc (15 grams per tonne gold-equivalent), for 2.79 million contained oz. gold and 166,000 tonnes copper (3.43 million equivalent oz. gold).

Inferred resources in the Main zone add 718,000 tonnes grading 2.7 grams gold, 0.9% copper and 0.1% zinc (3.8 equivalent grams gold), for 62,000 contained oz. gold and 7,000 tonnes copper (88,000 equivalent oz. gold).

In the Southern zone, the joint-venture partners have delineated an inferred resource of 1.4 million tonnes grading 7.2 grams gold, 0.7% copper and 0.1% zinc (8.1 equivalent grams gold), for 313,000 oz. gold and 10,000 tonnes copper (351,000 equivalent oz. gold).

The Hot Maden joint-venture project in Turkey. Credit: Mariana Resources.

In addition, a Hangingwall Zinc zone contains 398,000 tonnes in the indicated category grading 2.9% zinc and 0.6% lead for 11,600 tonnes zinc. The Hangingwall zone’s inferred resource stands at 2.9 million tonnes grading 4% zinc and 0.5% lead, for 114,000 contained tonnes zinc.

The company expects to finish a PEA on Hot Maden soon and hopes to wrap up a prefeasibility study during the first half of 2017, and is “rapidly moving to development,” Parsons said.

The focus at Hot Maden is exploring for potential strike extensions to the known mineralization along the 5 km long Hot Maden fault and hydrothermal alteration zone, and by testing (through deep geophysics and drilling) the potential for more gold-copper resources beneath the mineralization’s depth limit, which is 400 metres below surface, the company says.

Some of its best drill intercepts include 82 metres grading 32.7 grams gold per tonne and 1.9% copper from 55 metres, including 22 metres of 83.9 grams gold and 1.8% copper from 89 metres. Another returned 63.6 metres of 14.5 grams gold and 3.4% copper from 56.8 metres, including 21 metres of 38.9 grams gold and 5.1% copper from 85 metres.

Over in western Turkey, Mariana owns 100% of the Ergama gold-copper project, where initial drill holes have been permitted and drilling is expected to begin this year. Ergama is not far from the Kisladag porphyry deposit, Turkey’s largest gold mine, owned by Eldorado Gold (TSX: ELD; NYSE: EGO).

While Mariana’s flagship project is Hot Maden, its roots are in southern Argentina, where its projects are part of a 1,600 sq. km land package in the Deseado Massif district in Santa Cruz province. The projects — Las Calandrias, Sierra Blanca, Los Cisnes and Bozal — have been “on a low-cost, maintenance type of program going though the bad times,” Parsons said. But now, with the change in government and the election late last year of Mauricio Macri, the country’s new pro-business president, Mariana sees upside potential.

“Most of Mariana’s attributable value in the old days was because of Argentina, so it’s something to unlock for us going forward,” Parsons said.

Its exploration focus has been on advancing high-grade gold-silver vein and breccia targets. The company’s most advanced exploration asset is Las Calandrias, where in 2011 Mariana reported a maiden resource estimate of 11.8 million tonnes grading 1.29 grams gold per tonne and 17.4 grams silver per tonne for 381,000 contained oz. gold and 6.6 million contained oz. silver. Inferred resources add 0.9 million tonnes grading 0.93 gram gold and 5.2 grams silver for 25,900 oz. gold and 144,000 contained oz. silver.

At Los Cisnes, 120 km southeast of Las Calandrias (and 75 km southwest of Yamana Gold’s [TSX: YRI; NYSE: AUY] Cerro Moro gold-silver development project), drilling in 2015 returned a 2.9-metre intercept grading 755 grams silver per tonne, including a 0.9-metre interval of 1,400 grams silver.

Work at its Sierra Blanca project, in the western part of the Deseado Massif, has focused on delineating high-grade gold-silver shoots within the 22 km strike extent of an intermediate sulphidation epithermal vein system. Assays from channel sampling included up to 25.7 grams gold and 7,600 grams silver.

In addition to its projects in Argentina, and the Dona Ines gold-silver prospect and Exploradora East copper prospects in Chile, Mariana has a 10.2% interest in the Nassau gold project in Suriname, a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America.

At press time Mariana Resources traded at 99¢ per share within a 52-week range of 85¢ to $1.20. The junior has 120 million shares for a $119-million market cap.

Top shareholders include Sandstorm Gold (7.5%); the Sprott Group (5.7%); AngloGold Ashanti Holdings (4.1%); Resource Capital Funds (4.4%); and directors and management (1.8%).

“At the beginning of last year, we would have been 85% retail, and just with the whole move with Hot Maden and the obviously exciting nature of that project, we started seeing institutions coming in,” Parsons said. “Sandstorm came in recently, in May, and the Sprott Group has been invested in us for the last two years and continues to support us heavily. Rick Rule always does comment on Hot Maden being one of the greatest discoveries.”