Aurum Resources has scored extensive gold grabs reading up to 11.46m at 6.67 grams per tonne in four diamond drillholes during a second campaign at the BM Target 1 within its Boundiali gold project in the West African nation of Côte d'Ivoire.
The program entailed five diamond drillholes for 914.5m and delivered a crop of broad, shallow, medium to high-grade gold hits, with responses indicating mineralisation remains open along strike and down-dip. The best-grade intercept in the program in the far north of the company’s 51 per cent-owned BM licence also includes 1.46m at an eye-catching 45.04g/t gold.
The longest intercept is 45m going 0.93g/t gold from 78m, including 8m running 1.18g/t gold from 78m, while a further 25m at 1.15g/t gold from 98m to end-of-hole means mineralisation is likely to remain open.
A third hole bored its way through 10m going 2.84g/t gold from 120m including 8m running 3.40g/t. The remaining hole probed 6.31m at 2.73g/t gold from 164.69m including 4.31m at 3.4g/t.
Other results are pending, although it appears from preliminary results that the fifth hole at least contains 10m grading 1.26g/t gold from 107m including 1m at 7.13g/t from 107m. The intercepts could still be updated with a later tranche of results.
Aurum Resources managing director Dr Caigen Wang said: “We're delighted to report shallow, wide high-grade gold from our second round of drilling at BM Target 1 including 11.46m at 6.67g/t Au from 162.54m in MBD049, which is the best result to date on the BM tenement.”
Management said that before it kicked off the latest round of drilling, the company’s geologists refined the program design in concert with a review of previous drilling and mapping of the prospects that include several big artisanal open pits.
Aurum says that with gold mineralisation remaining open along strike and at depth on all of its prospects and with drilling ongoing, it will maintain the current pace to follow up the encouraging initial results. It is aiming for about 1500m of drilling at BM Target 1 each month in a bid to define the nature and extent of known gold mineralisation at the site, while continuing to explore for new discoveries.
The wider work program will include scout and step-back diamond drilling at the adjacent BD tenement and while continuing to better define known gold zones, it will also aim to define new targets.
Aurum’s recently-updated complement of drill rigs to six enables it to bore out some 10,000m of drilling per month in its mission to fulfill this year’s target of about 45,000m.
Management says it remains well-funded with about $20 million in the bank, allowing it to accelerate drilling and build on encouraging results. It is aiming to produce an inaugural JORC mineral resource estimate for Boundiali before the end of the year.
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By Doug Bright
