Predictive Discovery Ltd (ASX:PDI) aims to boost its West African gold prospects through new drilling programs at two joint venture projects.
Reverse circulation (RC) drilling programs are underway at the Progress Minerals Joint Venture in Burkina Faso and Toro Gold Joint Venture in Cote D’Ivoire.
There is circa 10,000 metres of drilling planned at the Bira prospect in Burkina Faso and the Ferkessedougou North prospect in Cote D’Ivoire.
“Exploration advancing rapidly”
Paul Roberts, managing director, said: “Exploration is now advancing rapidly across our West African portfolio of joint-ventured permits.
“We have recently reported encouraging RC drill results from multiple prospects at Bobosso in Cote D’Ivoire.
“These two new drilling programs are testing distinctly different opportunities.
“At Bira, we aim to confirm and extend a known gold mineralised zone and hopefully expand the existing resource inventory on the Bonsiega group of permits.
“At Ferkessedougou there will be reconnaissance tests of widespread, gold-anomalous altered granitic rocks and meta-sediments exposed in the recent trenching program.”
READ: Predictive Discovery drilling for gold in Burkina Faso
Predictive’s holdings in Burkina Faso are in the east and cover circa 90 kilometres of strike length of the Samira Hill greenstone belt.
Predictive Discovery’s prospects in eastern Burkina Faso.
This belt hosts the 2.5 million-ounce Samira Hill gold deposit across the border in Niger and contains numerous active artisanal gold mine sites.
The joint venture with Progress Minerals International began on 30 September 2017 and allows Progress to earn a 70% interest by spending $US5 million on exploration and project evaluation.
Moving towards scoping study
The objective is to advance the prospects as quickly as possible towards a scoping study on a multi-pit mining operation feeding a central mill.
At Bira historical drill data from previous explorers includes a series of encouraging intersections.
These include 14.5 metres at 3.1 g/t gold from 1 metre, 13 metres at 2.5 g/t from 3 metres and 10 metres at 2.7 g/t from 14 metres.
There is good continuity of mineralisation indicated along strike and at depth, and the prospect is open to the north and south.
The JV plans to undertake 5,000 metres of RC drilling, testing circa 800 metres of strike.
READ: Predictive Discovery drills out shallow high-grade gold in Cote d'Ivoire
Predictive is in a joint venture with Toro Gold, a private UK-based company, on six granted permits and two permit applications in Cote D’Ivoire.
The JV operates through Predictive’s former subsidiary, Predictive Cote D’Ivoire SARL, of which Predictive now holds 35% and is contributing 35% of expenditure.
The company has prospects in the north of Cote D’Ivoire.
Ferkessedougou North permit is in northern Cote D’Ivoire, directly adjacent to Burkina Faso’s southern border.
A broad, 17 kilometre-long zone of gold-in-soil geochemical anomalies has been reported previously.
Numerous gold zones
Bottle roll cyanide leach analyses of trench channel samples has revealed numerous zones with anomalous gold values.
Drilling of 4,440 metres is underway to follow up trench results and soil anomalies, testing 14 separate targets.
Toro Gold is also carrying out trenching on the Ferkessdougou South permit, which will probably be followed by additional drilling.