Aurum Resources has reported shallow and wide intercepts from scout drilling at the BD tenement within the Boundiali gold project in Côte d’Ivoire.
It is the second target to be tested in an ongoing diamond drilling (DD) program at the company’s West Africa landholding.
Assays from 15 holes completed for a total 2,815m produced high-grade gold shoots such as 6 metres at 9.95 grams per tonne gold from 165m including 2m at 28.9g/t 18m at 2.58g/t gold from 110m 17m at 1.46g/t gold from 72m including 2m at 7.23g/t from 78m 27m at 1.14g/t gold from 163m including 8m at 2.25g/t from 177m and 18m at 1.34g/t gold.
More than 4,000 core samples from two targets at BD are currently in the laboratory, with results expected over the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, drilling continues with more DD holes being logged, sampled and prepared for assaying.
Company-owned rigs
Aurum recently purchased a third rig for its fleet to increase drilling capacity from 2,600m to approximately 4,000m per month from April.
Aurum commenced its inaugural scout drilling campaign at Boundiali in October using two self-owned and operated DD rigs.
The company has completed 82 DD holes for 13,835 m to date, including 31 completed for 4,901.85m on the BM tenement and 51 completed for 8,933.34m on the BD tenement.
Exploration at BD is more advanced, with soil sampling highlighting a large corridor of anomalies measuring more than 30 parts per billion gold.
Follow-up reverse circulation drilling at BD comprising 91 holes for 6,229m has defined three prospects that Aurum is currently testing.
Gold mineralisation at BD is believed to be structurally controlled and hosted within unaltered or weakly altered sediments (greywacke and argillite).
The company said more extensive alteration, veining and sulphidation occurs in zones of structural complication.
Project location
The Boundiali project is located within the same greenstone belt as the large Syama (containing 11.5 million ounces) and Sissingue (1.0Moz) gold mines to the north, the Tongon (5.0Moz) mine to the northeast and the Koné project (4.5Moz) to the south.
Multiple gold targets at the BM tenement have been defined from extensive gold-in-soil anomalism and artisanal pits associated with a north-to-south trend of metasediments and granites.
In the south, on the western margin of the permit, Aurum said there is a sheared and cut-up granite with metasediments wrapping around the ellipsoidal granitic body that presents an “exciting target zone” for evaluation.
