Aurum Resources expands Ivorian gold presence with Boundiali South acquisition
Aurum Resources (ASX: AUE) is set to acquire the advanced Boundiali South (BST) exploration tenement next to its Boundiali gold project along West Africa’s Ivory Coast.
The tenement was granted to the Predictive Discovery Côte d’Ivoire SARL joint venture (JV) in 2014 and is currently under renewal.
The JV partners are Turaco Gold (ASX: TCG) with 89% equity and Predictive Discovery (11%).
Predictive Discovery has agreed to sell the BST tenement subject to Aurum obtaining the renewal (or replacement permit) and being satisfied that the terms of renewal do not restrict exploration or potential future mining rights.
Consideration for the sale will be in the form of either $800,000 cash or 5 million Aurum shares (where the 20-day volume weighted average price (VWAP) is less than $0.20) or $1.2m in Aurum shares (where the VWAP is more than $0.20).
Advanced tenement
Aurum managing director Dr Caigen Wang said the company was fortunate to have secured an advanced gold tenement to the south of its existing acreage.
“The combination of our BM and BD tenements with Boundiali South increases our prospective land holding and enhances our confidence in defining a large quantity of gold resources in the coming years,” he said.
“The wide and high-grade gold intercepts at BST are well in line with excellent gold intercepts being reported at the BD tenement.”
Boundiali South location
The Boundiali South tenement has a total area of 167.34 square kilometres and is located directly south of the Boundiali project.
It is positioned on the highly-prospective Boundiali greenstone belt that hosts the Syama gold project and the Tabakoroni deposit, owned by Resolute Mining (ASX: RSG).
Several smaller high-grade deposits have been discovered on the belt’s Nyangboueern extension into Côte d’Ivoire, including Sissingué and Bagoé – owned by Perseus Mining (ASX: PRU) – and the 4.9 million ounce Koné gold discovery to the southwest owned by Canadian company Montage Gold.
Historic exploration by companies including Turaco Gold have generated an exploration dataset of gold in soils as well as a vast drilling database of aircore, reverse circulation (RC) and diamond drilling (DD) results.
Past assays
Best past assays at the BST tenement have included 20 metres at 10.45 grams per tonne gold from 38m, 30m at 8.3g/t gold from 39m, 28m at 4.04g/t gold from 3m, 6m at 3.29g/t gold from 47m and 9m at 7.9g/t gold from 99m.
Other results have been 27m at 2.42g/t gold from 27m 20m at 1.29g/t gold from 211m and 2m at 13.57g/t gold from 130m.
RC and DD by Turaco in 2022 produced assays of 15m at 1.2g/t gold from 167m 6m at 1.35g/t gold from 191m 10m at 1.10g/t gold from 220m 4m at 8.34g/t gold from 21m including 2m at 16.36g/t and 17m at 1.09g/t gold from 189m.
Classified area
The eastern side of the BST tenement overlays a classified forest area which has previously been off limits to mining companies.
The Côte d’Ivoire government has confirmed its intent to change the country’s mining act to allow exploration and development within these areas.
Aurum expects the legislative changes will be applied within the next two years.