Ashburton to acquire Halmahera gold project

Australia firm Ashburton Minerals Ltd said Thursday that it has entered into an option agreement to acquire a majority interest in a highly prospective new gold project in Obi island, South Halmahera province.

The project encompasses a large artisanal goldfield and surrounding ground covered by a 70 sq km exploration licence in the project. The IUP is held by private Indonesian company PT Eka Samudra Nusantara, the company said.

Under the terms, Ashburton has paid Eka US$100,000 to secure an initial 4-week option period during which Ashburton will carry out its due diligence investigations.

?The 4-week option period expires on 10 December 2010 . If Ashburton decides to proceed, it will pay Eka US$1.5 million to secure an exclusive 12 month option period during which Ashburton is required to spend a minimum of $1 million on exploration,? it said.

The licence area contains a series of epithermal gold-silver-base metal veins and breccia zones currently being worked over a 1 km area by some 1,000 miners. The artisanal goldfield contains over 200 pits, shafts and adits scattered on the northern slopes of a hillside, located 2km inland from the coastal village of Anggai.

Some of the larger veins appear to be continuous along strike for several hundred metres. At least 4 - 5 separate veins are noted across strike of the main zone, with individual veins occasionally worked to depths in excess of 50 m.

Ore is treated through some 140 processing huts, equipped with banks of rudimentary small ball mills, or rolling drums. Random sampling of run-of-mine ore by Ashburton geologists, comprising 15 samples which were brought back to Perth for analysis, showed average grade to be 16 g/t, ranging from 4.3 g/t to 42.3 g/t. (giok)