Aurum drilling extends foothold at West African gold play

Aurum Resources has cemented a 51 per cent foothold on the BM joint venture (JV) within its Boundiali gold project in Côte d'Ivoire after completing more than 8000m of diamond drilling at the West African site.

After plugging in 8408.35m of drilling to up its share of the JV, the company can secure up to 80 per cent of the BM operation it shares with Minex West Africa by hitting further exploration milestones. It has increased its slice to the 51 per cent through nailing its drilling requirements just a year after making the deal with Minex.

As part of the staged earn-in schedule, Aurum can reach the 80 per cent per cent hold by spending US$2.5 million (AU$3.74 million) on exploration activities, based on a  drilling cost of US$140 (AU$209) per metre of diamond drilling. It can also secure between 80 per cent and 88 per cent of future gold production, depending on cost contributions by the two firms.

The Government of Côte d'Ivoire retains a free-carried 10 per cent stake for the JV’s gold production. After the most recent drilling campaign has been completed, the JV is now anxiously awaiting assays, which are expected early next month.

Aurum Resources managing director Dr Caigen Wang said: “We are pleased to announce that through careful and geologically-driven planning and execution of diamond drilling programs, in the second phase of our Plusor-Minex JV, we have drilled 8000m of diamond holes to earn 51% project interest. While the scout drilling results released early this year are encouraging, we are more excited about pending assay results in early October for new holes drilled in recent months.”

The BM ground is the easternmost of four exploration tenements in Aurum’s Boundiali gold project in Côte d'Ivoire’s north-central region, about 560km north-west of the country’s capital Abidjan.

It is a long tenement measuring about 70km north-to-south and ranges in width between about 3km and 10km. The ground features an almost continuous run of soil gold anomalism exceeding 50 parts per billion and mostly greater than 100ppb along its northern 50km.

The potential gold wealth of the BM ground is hinted at by its extensive – and in some places still active – artisanal gold mining operations that have exposed multiple drill-ready gold targets in various locations within the tenement. Aurum has identified two target areas – BM Target 1 and BM Target 2 – that lie within the northernmost 20km of the tenement.

The company initially plugged 4876.9m of scout diamond drilling into the BM ground late last year.

It was rewarded by a swag of gold hits including 16m at 1.24 grams per tonne from 117m with 6m at 2.44g/t from 127m in one hole and a second hole showing 7.39m going 1.94g/t gold from 139.34m featuring 5.35m running 2.53g/t from 141.37m. A third hole came up with another long run of 16.3m at 1.02g/t gold from 86.7m including 8m at 1.71g/t gold from 95m.

Management says that with its current rate of diamond drilling, it expects to be able to define its first JORC mineral resource on the BM ground by the end of the year. It will then combine a new BM resource with its imminent maiden JORC-compliant resource from the adjacent BD ground where it has also been scoring some big hits.

Aurum remains well-funded with about $20 million in the kitty, which it says will enable it to accelerate exploration drilling at Boundiali to meet its two inaugural resource objectives on the BM and BD ground.

It appears the company is all dressed-up and raring to go, with several of its own rigs all on station and churning out the gold-laden drilling metres from ground where there is no shortage of targets and tonnes of visible evidence of the site’s prospectivity seen through the massive, long-standing and widespread artisanal open-pit workings. 

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