Riverstone Samples Gold At Nami In Burkina Faso

VANCOUVER — The latest sampling results at Riverstone Resources’ (RVS-V) Karma project in Burkina Faso have returned encouraging grades as the company heads into a formal drilling program in the area. Riverstone took panel samples from artisanal shafts located 4 km north of the other four deposits at Karma, where the company doubled its gold count last year.

The new area is known as the Nami prospect. Out of 182 samples from Nami, nine returned values greater than 10 grams gold per tonne, 41 were greater than 1 gram gold, and 64 were greater than 0.3 gram gold. The best sample returned a grade of 89.2 grams gold.

Riverstone probed the Nami prospect by sampling 200 artisanal shafts and 200 waste dumps from those shafts. The company reports it took the 30-cm panel samples at regular levels in each shaft where possible.

Gold in the area is associated with quartz veins and veinlets within a granodiorite host rock and a breccia body within the granodiorite. The artisanal activity started in mid-2009 and has a current footprint of 800 metres in length and 150 to 350 metres in width.

The latest results add to those from an initial sampling program in December 2009, when 51 samples returned an average grade of 10.4 grams gold. Once the rest of the panel sampling results are in, Riverstone plans to kick off a 3,000-metre reverse circulation drill program at the site.

Riverstone already has four established deposits at the Karma project, of which Rambo is one. The four gold deposits delineated to date at the project, which sits 100 km north-northwest of Ouagadougou, hosts indicated and inferred resources totaling 1.14 million oz. gold. Specifically, Riverstone has defined 21.4 million indicated tonnes grading 1.2 grams gold and 12.2 million inferred tonnes averaging 0.82 gram gold.

The resource is oxidized and shallow; more than 95% of the gold sits within 100 metres of the surface. And Riverstone doubled the resource at Karma — one of the project’s four exploration permits came with a defined gold resource — for less than $10 per oz. in exploration costs.

The company recently completed a $1.8-million financing though the sale of 6 million units at a price of 30¢ per unit, with each unit containing a share and a warrant.

Since early January the company’s stock price has shot up from 20¢ to as high as 83¢ as the company continues to report solid results from its Karma project.

Riverstone’s share price dropped 11¢ on the day to close at 57¢. Its 52-week share price range is between 14¢ and 83¢; the company has 64 million shares outstanding, and 85 million fully diluted shares.