Arrow Minerals kicks off drilling at Dassa gold discovery

Africa-focused Arrow Minerals (ASX: AMD) has kicked off a drilling campaign to confirm and expand the 3km strike length of mineralisation at the Dassa gold discovery in Burkina Faso.

The junior explorer said the 3,500m reverse circulation (RC) program commenced on Wednesday at Dassa, within its wholly-owned Divole West project and is expected to finish before the end of July.

Up to 35 RC drill holes will target the down-dip extensions and on-strike continuation of the Dassa discovery, where two continuous zones of shallow gold mineralisation with grades of up to 45 grams per tonne of gold were confirmed in January.

Other significant intersections recently recovered include 13m at 3.8g/t gold, 3m at 13g/t gold and 13m at 2.4gt gold.

Arrow said auger sampling will be undertaken at the same time to test the continuation of the mineralisation for a further 3km to the south-west.

Chief executive officer Howard Golden believes drilling at Dassa has the potential to extend the known mineralisation “very significantly”.

“The RC drilling, combined with the auger sampling south of the Dassa gold discovery, will allow the confirmation of 3km of mineralisation and aim to define additional gold potential to the south-west which, if successful, will be the subject of further drilling later in the year,” he said.

Divole West drilling

This latest program follows RC drilling completed at Dassa by Arrow earlier in the year.

The earlier campaign discovered continuous gold mineralisation associated with shear zones in sediments adjacent to an underlying shallow-dipping granitoid intrusion.

As well as testing down-dip extensions, the new drilling program will fill in an undrilled position between known mineralised zones.

In addition, Arrow claims the 1,200m of shallow auger geochemical drilling also underway at Dassa could potentially “double” the strike length of the discovery.

Capital raising accelerates exploration plans

The drilling campaign’s launch follows Arrow’s announcement last month that it had successfully raised $3.2 million through an oversubscribed share placement.

The raising aimed to fast-track exploration plans both in West Africa and at its Strickland gold-copper project in Western Australia.

In addition to drilling at Dassa, the company is endeavouring to define targets at four other Burkina Faso projects: Boulsa, Divole East, Nako and Dyapa.

At the Strickland project , electromagnetic surveys are planned for the third quarter.