MINERAL EXPLORATION — Exploring in West Africa poses challenge — Ghana Goldfields follows in footsteps of predecessors

The bedrock may have similarities to rocks underlying the great gold camps of Eastern Canada, but tropical weathering and other differences in the surficial environment pose challenges for Canadian companies exploring for gold in West Africa.

Another challenge is to reassure investors that exploration programs are well-managed and of high technical quality. Everyone exploring in West Africa is being held more accountable since a salting scandal (involving two Canadian juniors) took place earlier this year at the Stenpad gold project in Ghana.

The scandal could not have come at a worse time for Ghana Goldfields (GHN-V), a Vancouver-based company with four concessions in southwestern Ghana: Safric, Flagbase, Inter-Afrique and Pamp. Results from work at one of the concessions were released on the same day as the devastating values from the check samples at the Stenpad (Golden Rule/Hixon) concession were made public.

“We got hammered on the market,” says George Cavey, vice-president of exploration.

Fortunately, the company had a quality-control program in place well before the fiascos of Busang (Bre-X Minerals) and Stenpad, which reassured the company’s shareholders. Cavey says mining analysts also were provided a detailed accounting of work procedures and the quality-control program. “We shouldn’t have to say that we split core — because that is a normal industry practice — but we do, just to be safe.”

Having survived the unfair burden of having a naughty neighbor, Ghana Goldfields is hard at work exploring its land package in Ghana. The ground is situated in the same mineralized belt that contains the world-class Ashanti gold mine, the Ayanfuri mine, and a host of newly discovered gold deposits.

As is the case with most companies working in West Africa, Ghana Goldfields has made a point of going where others have gone before. Old workings and evidence of artisanal mining have proved to be shortcuts to exploration success all over the world, and Africa is no exception.

“We used the old workings as an exploration guide quite extensively,” Cavey says. “Prospectors have always been the best finders, and that is as true today as it was in the old days.”

One of the company’s most prospective targets is the Flagbase concession, where some exploration took place during 1995 and 1996. A geochemical program indentified three main anomalous trends: the 900-metre-long Central zone, the 1,500-metre Northwest zone and the 1,600-metre Diewum zone.

Sampling on all three zones returned numerous anomalous gold values grading about 1 gram per tonne or higher, including: a 150-by-150-metre area averaging 2 grams per tonne; a 14-metre-long area of 12 grams; and 96.6 metres grading 0.95 gram.

Cavey says Flagbase has evidence of artisanal workings, but the zones were all defined by geochemical sampling, which has proved to be a useful tool in most tropical environments where weathering of mineralized bedrock leaves a surface expression. “We used that exclusively at Flagbase, and we are itching to drill. It’s a great-looking property.”

.SShut down

The company was itching to drill in early 1996, Cavey adds, but a moratorium was imposed on exploration in forest reserves, thereby forcing the program to shut down before any work could begin. Cavey believes the issue is “close to being resolved,” though no firm timetable has been set that would allow the company (and others affected by the ruling) to resume exploration.

In the meantime, the company is continuing work at its Pamp-North and Pamp-South projects, which are adjacent to Flagbase. These projects have plenty of evidence of past workings (probably dating to the 1920s), particularly Pamp-South, where there are four levels of underground workings.

“The locals were chasing the veins, which were a few metres wide,” Cavey says.

“And we use their past work as a visual tool to find other areas, which we define using geochem.”

Ghana Goldfields cleaned out and re-sampled the old workings, including the wallrock. “The locals were surprised and kept saying we should sample the quartz veins,” Cavey recalls. “We told them we already knew those would run.” The wallrock did return gold values, setting the stage for a larger resource picture than anctipated.

A drill program is under way on both the Pamp-North and Pamp-South vein systems. Nine holes totalling 1,278 metres have been completed on Pamp-South, where previous drilling had intersected a 59-metre-wide zone grading 3.22 grams gold and a 61-metre-wide zone grading 7.46 grams.

Four of the latest holes were drilled under the structure and yielded no values, while a fifth returned a narrow interval of 1.5 metres grading 7.64 grams starting at 53 metres.

.SOverturned structure

>From this work, the company determined that the structure is overturned, dipping steeply to the northwest near surface, but rotating and dipping steeply to the southeast at greater depths. Hole 22 confirmed the structure by testing the zone from the opposite orientation at the eastern end. The hole returned 1.6 grams gold over 54.5 metres (which includes 2.47 grams over 24 metres) and showed that the mineralized structure is strong at depth. The geological information from the holes also showed that the structure may consist of two folded, sub-parallel vein systems, as opposed to a single vertical vein.

Hole 20 intersected the structure and graded 2.59 grams over 9 metres. The western extension of the Pamp-South zone was tested by one shallow hole that intersected the Main zone between 55.5 metres and 60 metres, grading 1.76 grams over 4.5 metres. The zone now has a defined strike length of about 550 metres and is open to the west and at depth.

Nine holes were drilled at Pamp-North, which revealed geology and mineralization different from those of Pamp-South. The main difference is that no sulphides are present. (At Pamp-South, gold values are directly associated with the increase in arsenopyrite mineralization, which occurs both as blebs in the veins and as needle-like crystals in the phyllitic wallrock.) A large, low-grade oxide target is shaping up at Pamp-North, and two of the recent holes intersected gold values of 1.35 grams or less. A trenching program is under way in an effort to test new areas of mineralization that contain no anomalous geochemical values. This target was found “by sheer blind luck,” Cavey explains, when a pad was cut for the drill site.

Geophysics has not played a significant role at the Pamp projects, and only limited success has resulted from induced-polarization surveys.

The Safric prospect is at an early stage of exploration and has been put on the back burner in light of results from the Pamp and Flagbase concessions.

The Inter-Afrique concession has been tested by sampling, and several geochemical anomalies have been identified, which may be further tested by ongoing work programs.