To All,
Don't count this one out folks. There is still alot of life left!!
Tanah Laut drilling results
Borneo Gold Corporation BNO
Shares issued 32,800,000 Nov 21 close $1.60
Mon 24 Nov 97 News Release
Mr Francis Manns reports
The company has received successful results from its Tanah Laut drilling program in South Kalimantan, Indonesia. During 1996 and 1997, 2,888m of deeply weathered saprolite were drilled in 123 vertical holes. The objective of this drilling program was to test the viability of the bulk-tonnage exploration model being pursued by drilling soil geochemical anomalies identified in the Rasnu, Sarang Halang, and Munggukalang prospects of the Tanah Laut CoW. Portions of each of these gold soil anomalies were grid drilled on 50 metre centres and sampled at one and two metre intervals through the saprolite. Furthermore, each hole penetrated several metres into unweathered bedrock. An additional 500 metres of drilling has been authorized to follow an encouraging bedrock target. The Tanah Laut project enjoys an excellent combination of good regional infrastructure and ease of mining resulting in low anticipated mining costs and low economic cut-off grades. The Tanah Laut project area is at Pelaihari, one hour's drive from Banjarmasin, a city of 2.5 million, the capital city of the region of South Kalimantan. Pelaihari has a good system of all weather roads and water and communication systems that appear to be more than adequate. A 130 megawatt coal-fired power station is under construction near Pelaihari. Exploration cost is of the order of US$3.30 per ounce. This cost is expected to fall as the geological team gets up the learning curve to maximize thickness and grade. There are more than 35 linear kilometres of elevated soil geochemistry in the central block alone at Tanah Laut. To date approximately 1.5km have been drilled. The weathered layer of oxidized rock (saprolite) can likely be mined with scrapers and loaders without significant stripping, drilling or blasting. The situation is analogous to the Paracatu mine of Rio Tinto (51%) and TVX Gold (49%) in Brazil where the global reserve is 0.44 gpt. Cash operating costs per ounce at Brasilia were US$210 for the first two quarters of 1997. Paracatu requires no drilling or blasting but it does require crushing, grinding, flotation, gravity separation, carbon in pulp and carbon in leach processing yielding 76% recovery.
Phase one has identified a small tonnage interim resource of 60,000 ounces grading an average of 0.52 gpt over an average thickness of 7.4 metres (standard deviation: 6.8 metres) using a cutoff grade of 0.20 gpt over a minimum mining width of 2 metres. This compares very favourably to the company's preliminary analysis which indicates that reserves grading 0.52 gpt with a resource cutoff grade of 0.19 g/t would be economic, provided sufficient continuity can be demonstrated and metallurgy is favourable. Metallurgical tests are proceeding. The next step is geological correlation of the mineralized zones to determine continuity accompanied by fill-in drilling.
Overall, phase one results are in line with expectations and, on a preliminary basis, permit the viability of the bulk tonnage exploration model being pursued at Tanah Laut. Drilling of the large tonnage required for the project will require considerable capital, even at the US$20 per metre cost of drilling presently being incurred. Therefore, in addition to conducting detailed interpretation of geological information obtained in this drilling program, efforts at Tanah Laut will also now shift to a detailed scoping study of the project's anticipated capital and operating costs and the resulting required tonnage and grade to make the project economic at today's gold price. Once sufficient assurance is obtained regarding the validity of these assumptions the company anticipates proceeding with further drilling programs to fully define a measured resource at Tanah Laut. Several bedrock gold discoveries are also being pursued on Tanah Laut Timur, Borneo Gold's contiguous 7th generation CoW application.
Holes Rev. Core
Circ. 1996
1997
RASNU 86 84 2
SARANG HALANG 25 17 8
MUNGGUKALANG 14 8 6
GRAND TOTAL 125 109 16
Oxide Cutoff Above
metres para- Cutoff
meters metres
RASNU 2,193 2.0 728
SARANG HALANG 478 150
MUNGGUKALANG 217 0.20 50
GRAND TOTAL 2,888 928
Inter- Av SD
section Thick-
ness
(m)
RASNU 96 7.4 7.4
SARANG HALANG 20 7.5 4.5
MUNGGUKALANG 8 6.3 5.4
GRAND TOTAL 124 7.4 6.8
Wtd Provisional
Grade Stripping
gpt Ratio
RASNU 0.44 3.0
SARANG HALANG 0.94 3.2
MUNGGUKALANG 0.49 4.3
GRAND TOTAL 0.52 3.1
c Copyright 1997 Canjex Publishing Ltd. canada-stockwatch.com |
