Shallow drilling by
The deposit is part of the Dunkwa concession. Birim had been partnered with
Under the joint-venture agreement, Birim had full ownership of the oxide portion of Mampon and the nearby Aboronye gold deposit.
“That meant that Battle Mountain, which was managing the Dunkwa project, didn’t have any motivation to drill off the oxides at either deposit,” says Birim President Denis Simoneau. “With Battle Mountain gone, Birim has clear sailing to do what it wants with the oxides.”
In 1996, before the option agreement was entered into with Battle Mountain, Birim had drilled only one line of shallow reverse-circulation (RC) holes over Mampon, and, until now, no additional drilling had been carried out on the oxide layer, which is 5-45 metres thick and underlain by a transition zone 5-8 metres thick.
In the spring, on the heels of a $700,000 financing, Birim carried out a 28-hole, 1,718-metre RC program drilled on 25-metre centres into the upper 85 metres of the Mampon deposit. The drilling covered a strike length of 250 metres with fences positioned on either side of the original discovery line.
High-grade highlights from the recent drilling are as follows:
- 49 metres grading 8.37 grams gold per tonne in hole R63;
- 40 metres of 7.85 grams gold in hole R66;
- 46 metres of 15.37 grams gold in hole R68;
- 20 metres of 16.66 grams gold in hole R70;
- 45 metres of 16.61 grams gold in hole R71; and
- 17 metres of 9.12 grams gold in hole R84.
By comparison, the 1996 discovery hole, no. R14, cut 60 metres grading 7.1 grams gold.
The drilling also identified a new style of mineralization at Mampon: “Until now, with the diamond drilling that Battle Mountain had done at greater depth, the mineralization had always been associated with the Ashanti trend, which we call locally the Footwall shear,” says Simoneau. “What we’ve realized now with these latest holes is that good gold mineralization is also associated with greywackes that are not parallel with the Footwall shear, but dip at about 45 to the west.”
Simoneau notes that some of the RC holes intersected gold-mineralized greywackes some 80-100 metres west of the main shear zone and that this mineralization remains open to the west and south.
“But this mineralization style is not unique to Mampon,” says Simoneau. “It is seen at Ranger Minerals’ Abosso deposit and at Resolute’s Obotan mine [both are Australian companies with Ghanaian gold deposits]. So it’s becoming more and more obvious within the Birimian that there are flat zones, which make a hell of a difference when you’re contemplating an open-pit design.”
Currently, Birim is trying to raise funds to pursue more shallow drilling at both Mampon and Aboronye. The company is also commissioning metallurgical testwork to determine recovery rates from the oxide, transition and sulphide material.
Commenting on Birim’s future after Battle Mountain, Simoneau says: “The ideal scenario is for Birim to go on its own as long as it can, but we’re very much aware of the lack of interest in the marketplace, and so we are also evaluating other alternatives. What is ideal is not necessarily practical.”
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