 |
| | |
Great Quest Metals Would Make a Tasty Morsel for a Mid-Cap Gold Producer
February 27, 2007
minesite.com
Informed comment and independent mining news
Last summer we suggested that Canadian listed Great Quest Metals was getting close to a major gold discovery in Mali and nothing has happened in the intervening months to change this opinion. The president of the company, Will Osborne, was in London last week and he gave Minews a rundown on progress on the 350 sq kms of concessions in Mali. These lie within a 25 kms by 200 kms belt covering five gold deposits where over 30 million ounces of gold have so far been discovered. As the old man said, "If you want to find gold, go and look close to a mine." The Kenieba and Baroya concessions certainly conform to this advice as they share a 12.5 kms border with the Tabakoto-Segala package owned by another Canadian company, Nevsun Resources. Tabakoto is already in production as is Randgold's Loulo mine which is about 25 kms northwest of Baroya.
One of the perennial problems faced by Great Quest has been a lack of funds from North American investors for exploration in Mali. Even the proximity to Nevsun has not made things easier, but earlier this month the company raised C$1.28 million through two non-brokered private placements of units costing C$0.60 each. These units consist of a share in Great Quest, plus half a transferable share purchase warrant. Every warrant is exercisable over the next year at a price of C$0.75 and this could bring in more funding if the share price moves in the right direction. The money is going to be spent on testing the Djambaye 2 gold zone in the Kenieba concession at depth and along strike and testing the Djambaye 1 gold zone as well as some of the nine other zones on the concession.
Djambaye 1 and 2 are just to the south of the Tabakoto deposit and share a number of geological similarities with gold occurring in quartz veins associated with north-south striking rhyodacite and diorite dykes. Back in October, a preliminary resource estimate for the Djambaye 2 zone of 928,787 tonnes grading 4.48 g/t to give 133,882 ozs gold was announced, but this only covered a portion of the zone covering a length of 1,100 metres and 100 metres depth. The surface expression of the zone is three times as long and could be longer to the south, so this estimate may prove to have been very conservative. A 6,000 metre drilling programme is now underway and the first phase will test Djambaye 2 along strike and the second phase will test it to depth.
At the beginning of January, the total strike length of the Djambaye 1 and 2 zones and the Kabaye Est zone ran to 5,077 metres. By the end of that month it had increased to 6,608 metres on Djambaye 1 and 2 alone with both open to the south and Djambaye 1 to the north. In the meantime, exploration surveys in the TD area of the Bourdala concessions have resulted in the expansion of gold mineralization in Birimian metasediments on either side of a diorite dyke. These concessions lay roughly half way between Loulo and the Sadiola mine where IAMGOLD is in a joint venture with AngloGold as operator, so again Great Quest has got itself in an ideal position. An east-west trench has been dug across the diorite dyke from an area where artisan miners dug two pits in the past presumably targeting high-grade gold. This trench is being continued through more old artisan workings and several pits will be dug along this trench to define further drill targets. It is a wise man who follows artisan workings in Africa and they played a part in the discoveries of the Sadiola and Tabakoto deposits.
Great Quest also has the Manankoto gold concession and the Keneiti diamond concession in Mali and in Canada it has the Taseko copper-gold-molybdenum project north of Vancouver. The real value is growinf at Kenieba and Bourdala and Minews suggested to Will Osborne that he might sell Taseko to accelerate ezploration on these two concessions. He did not seem too keen to relinquish a foothold at home, although he would find it difficult to swear that Taseko added anything to the rating of his company.
After all, it is because of the potential of these big concessions in Mali that some of the big boys may be keeping a very close eye on the progress of Great Quest, especially as one of the directors is Mamadou Keita. He knows as much, if not more, about the geology of the country than anyone, having been chief geologist for BRGM, the French mining agency, in charge of a regional survey for gold and diamonds in Western Mali. The initial discovery of the Loulo deposit was made at that time and he was subsequently chief geologist of the Kenieba region for the Malian Ministry of Mines. His presence must add considerably to the value of Great Quest's exploration efforts.
SOURCE: www.minesite.con
| | |
