Tietto Minerals Ltd (ASX:TIE) has progressed its gold exploration operations in Cote D’lvoire, West Africa, by deploying a second, larger diamond drill rig at the Abujar-Gludehi deposit.
An Abujar resource upgrade is now scheduled for release in early April to include recent high-grade drilling results.
The company’s second diamond rig, which is capable of drilling to 800 metres depth, arrived at the project site in March together with accessories, spare parts, drilling consumables and core trays for the next 10,000 metres of diamond drill holes.
More than 20,000 metres of continuous diamond drilling is scheduled for the remainder of 2019.
Tietto’s deployment of its own modular diamond drill rigs has:
- Cut all-in, per-metre drilling costs by more than 70%;
- Enables the company to begin drilling the untested strike length at the deposit, where wet ground conditions prevented use of large contractor reverse circulation rigs; and
- Enables Tietto to immediately drill newly discovered higher-grade areas without delay.
Joint venture term sheet
Tietto has signed a joint venture term sheet to earn up to 80% of the exploration permit held by CI Gold Sarl, an Ivorian-owned company.
The permit is on the Tongon greenstone belt and the company has exclusivity for three months until the end of June 2019 to finalise a detailed JV agreement.
New exploration ground pegged
The company has also lodged two applications for exploration permits in northern Cote D’lvoire where several major operating gold mines and new gold discoveries are hosted.