Oriole confirms start of air core drilling at Fare

West Africa-focussed exploration company Oriole Resources announced on Monday that a 10,000 metre air core drilling campaign has begun at the Faré target within its Senala project in Senegal, where its joint venture partner Iamgold had the option to spend up to $8m to earn a 70% interest.

The AIM-traded firm said results from the programme were expected in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Chief executive officer Tim Livesey said Iamgold had mobilised “as quickly as possible”, despite the restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Prior to the signing of the joint venture earn-in agreement by Iamgold, work at Faré had returned some very exciting intersects, including best intersections of 96 metres grading 1.51 grams of gold per tonne and seven metres grading 86.39 grams of gold per tonne.

“The footprint of gold anomalism extends in excess of six kilometres in the main trend, with several potential additional offsets of mineralisation identified by previous soil sampling programmes.”

Livesey said recent success by Chesser Resources on its Diamba Sud prospect 10 kilometres to the east, combined with historical drilling at Faré, confirmed the prospectivity of the area and the potential for the discovery and development of a stand-alone mining project.

“The recent high level of successful exploration and coupled with very active merger and acquisition activity in the Kédougou-Kéniéba Inlier continue to support this area as a highly endowed and prospective gold district and we are particularly pleased to have been able to retain the 472 square kilometre footprint of the Senala licence for a potential further 10 years.”

At 1533 BST, shares in Oriole Resources were up 6.57% at 0.36p.