May/June 2013 - The ASIA Miner

Central Asia
1.2 million ounce gold resource at Okvau
A NEW independent JORC-compliant indicated
and inferred resource has been announced
at the Okvau deposit of Renaissance
Minerals’ flagship Okvau Gold Project in eastern
Cambodia. The company says the deposit
hosts 15.6 million tonnes @ 2.4
grams/tonne gold for 1.2 million ounces of
gold, of which 15.2 million tonnes @ 2.3
grams/tonne gold for 1.11 million ounces is
in the indicated category.
Renaissance managing director Justin Tremain
says, “This is a significant achievement for
the company. Renaissance acquired the project
less than 12 months ago and its initial drilling
program completed in 2012 has already resulted
in a major resource increase of 65% and a
33% improved gold grade to 2.4 grams/tonne.
“The project is proving to be a very attractive
high-grade project with significant scale. The
Okvau deposit covers only a small part of the
project area and demonstrates the prospectivity
of this unexplored region of Cambodia. Results
achieved to date vindicate our belief that
the eastern region of Cambodia will evolve into
a major new gold province in an emerging
country with a stable democratic government.”
The resource estimate includes results from
the company’s 2012 drill program which was
a combination of infill and extensional drilling,
and which provided better delineation of the
high grade gold zones at the site. The estimate
covers about 500 metres strike and 250 metres
width of the mineralized vein system. It utilized
90 diamond drill holes totalling 28,156
metres. Given historical local mining activity, the
estimate has excluded any mineralization from
surface to 10 metres vertical depth.
Mineralization remains open to the northeast,
southeast and at depth, and as such Renaissance
believes the resource estimate to be only
an interim measurement with much potential
to expand the resource base.
For the component potentially amenable to
open pit mining, a lower cut-off grade of 0.65
grams/tonne gold is considered appropriate
based on preliminary cost benchmarking undertaken
by Renaissance. The Okvau deposit
has a consistently high gold endowment per
vertical metre.
The company aims to establish a multi-million
ounce gold project at Okvau and is undertaking
a 25,000 metre reverse-circulation
program targeting high priority prospects within
close proximity of the Okvau deposit. It
has two RC rigs drilling and has recently
completed a successful surface geochemical
sampling program that generated multiple
targets to drill test during the current exploration
field season. All of these targets are
within 15km of the Okvau deposit.
Brighton tests Kang Roland North anomalies
BRIGHTON Mining Group has been undertaking
a series of infill auger drill grids at the Kang
Roland North concession in Mondulkiri province
of eastern Cambodia designed to test
gold anomalies in auger assays ranging between
0.02ppm and 4.6ppm gold. These are
significant and promising anomalies that trend
Rock samples at a Brighton Mining Group concession in Cambodia.
southeast to northeast at a distance of 500 to
800 metres from the mapped intrusion edge.
The company says this is a favourable zone
for mineralization in terms of the temperature
and pressure regime. In addition the trend follows
some mapped diorite dyke occurrences
with the focus of the current work, therefore,
on designing relevant programs to tighten the
target area with a series of infill auger drill
holes along with trenches.
Kang Roland is part of the Antrong project
area which is highly prospective for gold and
base metals and is northwest of the Okvau project
of Renaissance Minerals. As well as Kang
Roland, it also comprises the Antrong and Ropoah
concessions. All three are subject to a single
mineral licence granted to Sun Hill Minerals,
a company incorporated under Cambodian law
and in which Brighton has a 70% interest.
The first and second infill auger drill grids at
Kang Roland North were designed to test and
infill previous auger drilling areas that had returned
positive and high-grade gold results around
the intrusion edge. There are two well pronounced
granodiorite intrusions in the western part
of the concession. The grids comprise about
350 auger holes that will better define targets
due to narrowing of the sample spacing and will
lead to the next programs including trenching,
ground geophysics and initial drilling.
The third auger grid, which comprises about
150 auger drill holes and is in the northern central
part of the concession, is designed to further
test the initial stream sediment sampling
program in this area which returned positive results
for gold and rare earth elements.
38 | ASIA Miner | May/June 2013