Panthera Resources PLC (LON:PAT) has started its 5,000m reverse circulation drilling programme at the Labola (Wuo Land) Project in Burkina Faso.
The programme is designed to support a maiden resource estimate and will see several gold targets explored with assay results due from the third quarter of this year.
Panthera added the drilling will test a subset of results obtained by High River Gold Mines (later acquired by Nord Gold SE) and Taurus Gold during 2008-2012, which totalled 65,556m of drilling in 541 holes.
The drill programme will also examine the coarse gold component of the mineralisation via the accelerated cyanide leach technique "LeachWell" to assess whether historical assay results have potentially underreported the gold grades.
Other work at Labola in support of the maiden resource will involve. re-logging, quality control, satellite and terrain models and identifying artisanal workings and how much material they have moved.
The area contains numerous artisanal workings over at least 14,000m strike, said Panthera, which appear to be targeting high-grade shoots within individual quartz veins.
In addition to the confirmatory drilling, two areas with no previous drilling have been selected for drill testing designed to identify additional mineralisation.