Bambari drilling turns up gold at depth (July 21, 2003)

Recent drilling by Axmin (AXM-V) at the Bambari property in the Central African Republic has confirmed mineralization at depth below the property’s major surface gold occurrence, the French Camp prospect.

The four most recent holes in an eight-hole diamond-drill program intersected gold mineralization in banded iron formation down-dip from the surface occurrence at French Camp, where previous reverse-circulation drilling had confirmed earlier soil sampling. The new holes encountered gold mineralization as deep as 100 metres below surface.

Hole PDC-002 cut a 34.4-metre interval grading 3.2 grams gold per tonne, including a 6-metre section grading 8.9 grams. It had been drilled from the same collar as an earlier hole, PDC-001, which intersected 16.5 metres grading 8.5 grams gold per tonne, including 9.2 metres grading 14.3 grams. PDC-002 tested down-dip from the earlier intersection.

Another hole, PDC-006, was drilled on the same section as PDC-002 but about 40 metres to the west; it tested to about 95 metres vertical depth. A 29.7-metre interval near the bottom of the hole returned an average gold grade of 4.6 grams per tonne, and included a higher-grade zone, 15.2 metres long, which graded 6.7 grams per tonne.

A further 240 metres to the south, hole PDC-007 cut 5.3 metres grading 1.8 grams and hole PDC-008 cut 1.3 metres grading 2.6 grams per tonne.

The results extend the mineralization found in the first phase of the French Camp diamond drill program, which included hole PDC-001. Another hole in that program, PDC-005, was drilled slightly to the east of PDC-001 and returned 7.4 metres grading 5.2 grams gold per tonne near the surface, in the same horizon as PDC-001 and PDC-002. A second mineralized intersection in PDC-005, which graded 2.2 grams per tonne over 15.8 metres, appears to be down-dip from a second iron formation horizon further into the footwall.

Two holes 80 metres to the south of the section indicated a similar stratigraphic picture. Hole PDC-003 encountered three mineralized zones in the footwall iron formation, with grades of 4-6 grams per tonne over core lengths of 7 to 25 metres. Hole PDC-004, drilled to intersect the same horizon further down dip, intersected three zones of gold mineralization over core lengths of 29.8 metres, grading 3.3 grams gold per tonne; 10.5 metres, grading 6.3 grams per tonne; and 7.9 metres, grading 3 grams.

Axmin has a 3,000-metre drill program planned for the property, including the holes on French Camp. Two other prospects, the Main Zone and the Katsia showing, are to be tested in this round of drilling.