Avocet Mining acquires Papua gold property
Tuesday, December 14 2004 - 12:04 AM WIB
The CoW includes exploration and mining rights over 108,600 hectares in the Idenburg area, near Papua New Guinea border.
The terms of the JVA are such that the Company has paid US$50,000 cash on signing and will earn its 51% interest after expenditures on exploration and development total US$2.5 million within a two year timeframe.
Avocet said it had already spent US$377,400 on due diligence work that will count towards the earn-in expenditure.
The CoW lies in a low mountain range some 120 kilometres to the south of the provincial capital of Jayapura, which is situated on the northern coast. During due diligence work over the last nine months, the Company?s geological team has identified three primary drilling targets at Bermol, Mafi, and Kali Sua Sinta.
The company said it would initially focus on Kali Sua Sinta where it has identified several zones of high-grade mineralisation within a 400 metres strike length and 500 metres width. This is located within a shear zone that extends for at least five kilometres.
The company said surface channel sampling at Kali Sua Sinta has returned gold grades at surface as high as 73 g/t.
Initial metallurgical test work (bottle roll tests) indicates gold recoveries exceeding 95%.
The company plans to commence drilling at Kali Sua Sinta in the first half of 2005 with the initial objective of identifying a minimum gold resource of 500,000 ounces in the area?s near surface, high grade zones.
The Bermol and Mafi prospects represent the next generation of targets within the CoW. Both lie on an under-explored, fifteen-kilometre long structure. Previous channel sampling at Bermol returned 8m at 5.81 g/t Au, 6m at 8.42 g/t Au, 8m at 5.78 g/t Au and 4m at 19.4 g/t Au.
Scout drilling at Mafi intersected up to 12.6m at 8.00 g/t Au.
Avocet had just commenced gold production from its mine in North Sulawesi in October this year.(alex)