Ashburton updates Halmahera gold project
Monday, May 2 2011 - 03:39 AM WIB
Obi Gold Project
In early March 2011 the Company was advised by its Indonesian partner, PT Eka Samudra Nusantsara (?PT Eka?) that PT Eka had executed a drilling contract with drilling services provider PT Indo Asia Resources (?IAR?), thus securing a drilling rig to undertake the Company?s proposed 4,000m diamond drilling programme at Obi.
Under the terms of the agreement with PT Eka, Ashburton will provide funding for PT Eka to be used to carry out exploration activities within the PT Eka tenement at Ashburton?s direction.
IAR is an Indonesian drilling company, based in Jakarta and Balikpapan, operating 14 drilling rigs, including several rigs currently drilling at Weda Bay on Halmahera Island to the north of Obi Island. IAR is owned and operated by an Australian expatriate with extensive experience in the drilling industry, both in Australia and Indonesia. The company was chosen due to its existing operational presence close to Obi and experience in remote environments.
On 9 March 2011 the Company made the second payment of US$500,000 to PT Eka as per the terms of the Option Agreement under which the Company can acquire a majority interest in the Obi Gold Project in Indonesia. A third, and final, payment of US$500,000 is to be made by the Company by 10 June 2011.
Processing Equipment
The Company?s Managing Director, Tom Dukovcic, travelled to mainland China with the principal of PT Eka to the Xiamen area in southern China to inspect several facilities specialising in the manufacture of gravity processing equipment. The trip confirmed the availability of equipment of good build quality and industry standard design, including crushers, ball mills, spiral concentrators, flotation tanks, and shaking tables. Investigations are continuing into the final configuration of the processing route to be adopted at Obi as an alternative to the mercury amalgamation process currently used to treat artisanal gold ore from the Small Scale Mining Area.
Historical Exploration Data
As reported to the market in the initial announcement on the Obi Gold Project on 18 November 2010, there was local knowledge of prior exploration carried out at Obi in the mid-1990s, specifically including 10 diamond drill holes.
The Company has been investigating the source of this work and recently managed to obtain a significant portion of this data.
The work was conducted by PT Obi Minerals, a BHP subsidiary owned 80% by BHP Minerals Sulawesi Inc and 20% by PT Aneka Tambang (Persero) Tbk (?BHP?). BHP carried out work across most of Obi Island, including the area now the site of artisanal gold mining and the subject of the Company?s present exploration focus, namely, the Obi Gold Project.
The BHP work was conducted in the period November 1995 to August 1996, and included rock chip sampling, stream sediment sampling, soil sampling, trenching and drilling. According to local villagers, some of whom were employed as field assistants, there were no artisanal gold workings in the area at the time of this work.
The culmination of the work completed by BHP was a 10-hole diamond drilling prqgramme, of which 5 holes were drilled in the vicinity of the current artisanal workings, at what is now known as Ambon. High-grade gold intercepts included
9.15 m @ 26.25 g/t, in hole AOD 09, from 38.0 m
13.70 m @ 6.13 g/t, in hole AOD 10, from 39.4 m
2.20 m @ 15.20 g/t, in hole AOD 07, from 78.6 m
Gold mineralisation is reported as being ?associated with sulphides contained in quartz veins and quartz breccia, contained in sedimentary rocks and Miocene andesite? (translated from Indonesian).
The Company has been unable to accurately confirm the location of these holes, there being some discrepancies in hole coordinates and, more importantly, azimuth. Further, geological drill logs are not available thus precluding a detailed understanding of the geology and the distribution of the. gold within the reported intercepts ? for example, whether related to massive veins or a series of narrow veins. However, the fact that sampling was carried out to a 0.1 m precision suggests a good degree of geological control and therefore gives confidence in the relevance of reported intervals.
Hole collars have been located in the field and it is evident that in a number of cases the holes are located away from the main focus of current artisanal diggings and on some occasions have been orientated away from the zone of main workings. The holes were targeted on the basis of the results of soil sampling and trenching programmes, and without the benefit of active artisanal workings to point the way.
The ?Contract of Work Termination Report?, dated Jakarta, November 1998, is in Indonesian and has been submitted for translation. The data acquired does not include all the items specified in the contents section, critically, the drill hole geological logs, and the location and assay data for the trenching. Attempts are continuing to locate additional information through other sources.
Analysis and verification of this historical information will continue. Although incomplete, the data to hand confirms the presence of extensive gold mineralisation within the Company?s project area, notably including high-grade intercepts, thus confirming the excellent prospectivity of the Obi Gold Project to host a significant economic gold deposit.
Some summary data is presented in the figures appended to this report. From these figures, it is clear that Ashburton?s proposed drilling will far more comprehensively test the main zone of artisanal workings, covering a zone some 700 m in strike and 200 m in width.
The drilling contractor has advised of a further delay, with drilling now expected to commence on or about 7th May 2011. The Company?s managing director, Tom Dukovcic, will be travelling to site to oversee the commencement of the drilling programme. (end of edited excerpt)