LONDON: Cora Gold has been awarded 100% ownership of the 82km2 Tagan Permit located along the Yanfolila Gold Belt in southern Mali.

The newly awarded permit area overlies what is considered to be the most prospective area of a previous permit held by Cora Gold which expired in June 2017.

The Tagan Permit lies approximately midway between the Sanankoro Permit of Cora Gold, with its gold discovery, and the Yanfolila Mine of Hummingbird Resources Plc, lying within a 30km radius of both.

Historic exploration covered the permit with reconnaissance soil geochemical sampling, primarily on a grid of 800m x 100m, with local areas infilled on 200m x 50m. Shallow auger and aircore drilling was also undertaken locally. One target at Tagan, an aircore hole, returned a grade of 1.1 g/t Au over 44m, which was undercut by a diamond core hole, which reported a grade of 1.7 g/t Au over 14m.

Cora Gold had previously compiled the historic data and has had the opportunity in Q2 2019 to undertake additional field work which focused on geological mapping of the permit.

This revealed that a considerable area of the Permit is covered by either transported recent sediment or is a laterite plateau of iron ferricrete. Both materials have the effect of masking or diluting soil sample responses.

To overcome this, semi quantitative termite sampling was undertaken across the western and southern part of the Permit at a density of sample collection which, although dictated by the occurrence of termite mounds, generally provides for a sample on roughly a 50-100m grid.

Sampling is conducted by the systematic collection of a known volume of sample from an intermediary or cathedral termite mound and panned with a count of the number of gold grains recovered. The technique is commonly used in surface gold exploration and often the sample is assayed for contained gold.

It is believed that termites descend below the transported material and lateritic cap and in bringing sands and clays to surface, bring with them gold grains derived from potential primary gold bearing structures.

The distribution and intensity of gold grains can be used as a targeting guide in conjunction with the results of the mapping programme with rock and quartz fragments which may also be found in anomalous areas.

Cora Gold’s field work programme has also included collecting samples of rock fragments if with features of interest, which are then crushed and panned for gold. It is not unusual to find contained gold grains in the rock which supports the identification of a target.

Through the combination of historic data and the results of the Cora exploration programme, over 20 priority targets of length typically between 800m to 2000m have been identified closely related to regional structural features that cross the Tagan permit. The priority targets include the area identified by previous drilling, around which occurs evidence of historic artisanal mining.

This work justifies a future exploration programme that might benefit from a regional geophysical programme to aid “looking through” the cover material, followed by extensive reconnaissance shallow drill programmes.

The Tagan Permit is awarded for an initial period of three years, with two subsequent extensions available of two years each.