GoldStone Resources (LON:GRL) has been given the go-ahead for drilling at the Homase gold project in Ghana, and it is expecting that the nearby Akrokerri licence will be renewed shortly.
The company has been waiting for Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to approve its drilling plans - with an initial 4,500 metres planned.
This morning Goldstone confirmed that the EPA has now given verbal approval and the EPA certificate should be received in the coming weeks. It will then secure a rig for the programme. If all goes to plan Goldstone said that the first drill results will be due in the third quarter of 2011.
In the meantime it will begin site preparations.
Goldstone expects to renew the neighbouring Akrokerri licence, and after that it will evaluate historical drill data to see if it can be used for an initial resource that could be added to the Homase resource.
The company is earning into an 85 percent stake in Homase through a deal with Cherry Hill Mining – at the moment it owns 51 percent of the project.
In April 2010 Goldstone published a JORC compliant resource for Homase which gave the project a total resource of 6.3 million tonnes grading 1.39 grams per tonne, for 282,608 ounces of gold. The bulk of the resource, 229,829 ounces, is in the measured and indicated resource category.
Further south at Manso Amenfi, Goldstone and its partner Asasemu Mining are making progress with a soil sampling programme. It has now delivered 1,460 of a total of 2,000 samples to the lab. The first results are expected to come through in the coming weeks and a full interpretation will follow shortly afterwards, the company said.
It may carry out further soil sampling or trenching, depending on the results.
Goldstone is also conducting a soil sampling programme on the Sangola licence in Senegal. So far it has already taken 6,500 samples and a further 1,600 are outstanding. It expects to send soil samples to the lab in the coming weeks.
The sampling results are expected in the second quarter of 2011 and it they find more targets then more sampling and trenching will follow.
Elsewhere in Gabon, Goldstone is expecting to hear the outcome of its two applications in the near term. The company said it is recognised as being ‘first-in-line’ for the first-come, first served licence awards.
"The company has made solid progress at Sangola and Manso Amenfi and we are poised to start drilling operations at Homase/Akrokerri soon,” chief executive Jurie Wessels said.
“Additionally, we are confident that the Akrokerri licence will be renewed and that we'll be able to add ounces to the Homase/Akrokerri resource from the historical data that we've acquired recently. We are also positive that we will receive news regarding our Gabon applications soon."