Vancouver — SKN Resources (SRL-V) received a nod from the Chinese government to form a cooperative joint venture with Chinese-based Kunming Gold Exploration Engineering to work on the Tuobuka gold project in the Yunnan province in China.
The deal was also approved by the Yunnan Province People’s government, the Department of Foreign Trade and Investment, the Development and Planning Committee of Yunnan and the Department of Land and Resources of Yunnan. These approval allow the creation of Yunnan Jin-Chang-Jiang Mining in which SKN will have an 80% interest with Kunming Gold holding the remaining 20%. They also allow SKN to move quickly on an exploration and drilling program.
In mid August, SKN inked a deal with Kunming Gold to form a sino-foreign joint venture cooperative company to explore the Tuobuka gold property. According to the deal SKN will earn its 80% interest by making certain cash payments to Kunming Gold over a three-year period. SKN reports that it already has completed its first cash payment. Once the earn in is completed cash contributions to Jin-Chang Jiang Mining will be made pro rata. Kunming Gold’s interest may be diluted to not less than 10% if the company elects not to make cash contributions.
The Tuobuka project covers an exploration permit spanning 24.62 sq. km, situated about 2 km south of the Boka 7 zone of Southwestern Resources (SWG-T) Boka gold project.
Based on the limited exploration work preformed to date by Kunming Gold, the Tuobuka project hosts gold bearing structures and mineralized zones similar to those currently being explored by Southwestern on the Boka property.
Gold mineralization at Tuobuka is hosted by Middle Proterozoic-aged carbonaceous shales and calcareous siltstones within a strata-bound thrust zone of ductile-brittle shearing. This shear zone is characterized by extensive multi-phase breccia/shear development and accompanied by quartz-carbonate and sulphide (pyrite) replacement.
Trenches dug by Kunming Gold cut several north-south trending gold bearing mineralized zones. Sampling of these zones returned values which included 3.6 grams gold per tonne over 13.0 metres and 48.4 grams gold over 0.8 metres.
SKN has contracted Kunming Gold to perform a first phase exploration program on the property which will include 1:10,000 scale geological mapping and soil geochemical and topographical surveys as will as detailed surveying and sampling of small scale mining tunnels. A drill program is anticipated in the next couple of months to test the best targets.
Together with SKN’s Huidong and Dongchuan projects, SKN now controls the majority of land surrounding Southwestern’s Boka project.
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