Borneo Gold begins drilling at Bunut

Toronto-based Borneo Gold (BNO-V) has begun an initial 5,500-metre diamond drilling program at its Bunut gold project in West Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The company holds a 90% interest in a seventh generation contract of work (CoW) covering the 186-sq.-km. property.

The drill program is testing a number of targets defined on the strength of an auger soil-sampling program and follow-up induced-polarization surveying.

The soil horizon in a 1.5-by-1-km area was found to contain significant amounts of free gold. Of the 2,896 soil samples taken, 71% contained visible gold.

Borneo employed a sampling methodology of counting grains of free gold in the auger samples. (Fire assays were found to be unreliably erratic due to the relatively small sample size and the coarse nature of the gold). The company states that there is evidence to suggest that the free gold found in mountainside soils at Bunut is close to its bedrock source.

A 20.5-tonne test-pit sample of bedrock from the Bingkai area, collected to a depth of 6 metres, averaged 3.7 grams gold per tonne. Channel sampling along an 11-metre trench extending from the test pit averaged 7.7 grams. Coarse visible gold and electrum were observed in association with pyrite and berthierite (an iron-antimony sulphide).

Smaller test pits in the area produced encouraging but erratic results due to the coarse nature of the gold.

In addition to retaining half the drill core for subsequent due diligence purposes, the company has hired Intertek Testing Services, the Indonesian subsidiary of Bondar-Clegg, to operate its on-site sample preparation facility and ensure secure transportation of samples to the Intertek assay lab in Jakarta.

Borneo has 33 million shares outstanding, or 36.2 million fully diluted, and a working capital of $6.4 million.