Arc reports new emerging gold target at Bima

ASX-listed mineral exploration firm Arc Exploration Limited announced on Wednesday encouraging gold results in soil at the Soro Prospect located near the centre the Bima Exploration IUP in Sumbawa island, West Nusa Tenggara.

Results highlight a 400m x 600m gold-in-soil anomaly underlain by boulders of gossanous silicified limestone and fresh limestone outcrops. Fifteen soil samples within this anomaly have returned highly elevated gold results ranging from 0.14 to 0.75 ppm Au, the company reported.

?These results and the recently announced high-grade trench intersection at Baku underscore the potential to identify major new prospects within the company?s project area, which lies on the relatively underexplored eastern end of the same belt of magmatic rocks that are host to the giant Batu Hijau and Elang gold-copper deposits,? Managing Director and CEO John Carlile said.

?We?ve only explored a small part of the tenement to-date, so we hope to identify new targets as we expand our reconnaissance activities in the project area. None of these prospects have been previously drilled. We plan to start drilling early next year,? Carlile added.

This gold soil anomaly is as large as those at the Baku and Kowo prospects, where ongoing surface work has clearly highlighted large gold targets. The key difference is that Soro appears to be in limestone rather than in intrusive or volcanic rocks at as is the case Baku and Kowo.

Further surface work is in progress at Soro to confirm this new gold target.

The Bima Exploration tenement covers 250 square kilometres and is prospective for intermediate to high-sulphidation epithermal gold and porphyry copper-gold deposits. The project has excellent infrastructure with a network of sealed to graded roads traversing almost all of the tenement area.(alex)