Central Iron Ore seeks more gold in Western Australia

Central Iron Ore‘s (CIO-V) primary focus may be the magnetite and direct shipping ore it believes exists on its 652 sq. km of tenements in the Yilgarn iron ore province of Western Australia, but the junior is also busy exploring for gold and increasing its tenements in the South Darlot region near Barrick Gold‘s (ABX-T, ABX-N) Darlot gold mine. 

Central Iron Ore’s South Darlot gold project, 320 km northwest of Kalgoorlie, includes the British King gold mine, which is under care and maintenance. The British King mine is 5 km west of Barrick’s underground Darlot gold mine in Western Australia’s Yandal greenstone belt. 

In late February the Vancouver-based junior signed a farm-in joint-venture agreement with Barrick over 10 tenements covering 26 sq. km near the gold major’s Darlot mine. The joint-venture tenements are southwest of Barrick’s Darlot mine and contiguous with Central Iron Ore’s current holdings in the area. 

Under the agreement Central Iron Ore can earn an initial 51% interest and management of the joint-venture area by spending A$450,000 over the next two years, with the option to increase its stake to 70%.

Central Iron Ore intends to evaluate gold prospectivity and deliver on target generation and exploration access approvals over the next 12 months.

In addition to substantially increasing its contiguous tenement interests within its South Darlot gold project area, the agreement gives Central Iron Ore critical access to Barrick’s extensive project data base and knowledge over the area of the joint-venture tenements. It also consolidates and gives the company access to a number of known anomalies within the tenement area, and Central Iron Ore is hopeful that it can advance these to the point where they might be exploited to benefit the joint-venture parties. 

In addition to the South Darlot project, Central Iron Ore has the Eureka gold project 50 km north of Kalgoorlie, where it has four mining leases on the Bardoc Shear. The gold project includes its 100%-owned Eureka open-pit mine, which is under care and maintenance. 

At presstime Central Iron Ore traded at 8.5¢ per share within a 52-week range of 7¢-35¢ per share. The junior has 72.7 million shares, fully diluted.