AFRICA — NEWS ROUNDUP — Ashanti advances Tera

A second-phase program by Ashanti Goldfields (AHD.U-T) will continue to test the Tera gold project in Niger.

The African gold producer holds rights to earn 51% of Carlin Resources’ (CLM-V) 90% interest in the project.

To earn the interest, Ashanti must spend US$2 million on exploration by the end of this year and produce a feasibility study. About US$750,000 has been spent to date.

The current program will include 4,000 metres of mechanical trenching and more geological mapping to test gold targets generated during the 1997 program. These targets also will be drill-tested this year.

The Tera property is a large, 1,500-sq.-km concession. It covers a large segment of the same shear system that hosts the neighboring Koma Bangou gold deposits. To date, more than 48,000 soil samples and more than 8,500 rock samples have been collected, along with 900 samples from termite mounds.

This work has identified numerous gold-in-soil anomalies, with values ranging from 0.1 to 1.9 grams gold per tonne. Most of these are found along two main trends — a 26-km-long section of the Tera shear zone and the new 30-km-long Namaga zone.