Panthera begins drill programme at Labola project

West Africa and India-focussed gold exploration and development company Panthera Resources announced on Friday that the reverse circulation drill rig has arrived on site at the Labola Wuo Land Project in Burkina Faso.

The AIM-traded firm said that as a result, the planned 5,000 metre drilling programme had started.

It said the drilling would mainly support a maiden resource estimate, with several exploration targets to also be drill tested.

Assay results were expected from the third quarter of 2021.

“Panthera's associated company, Moydow, has designed the drill programme to support the preparation of a resource estimate in accordance with JORC or NI43-101 standards,” the company said in its statement.

“The drilling will test a subset of previous drill results obtained by High River Gold Mines and Taurus Gold [between] 2008 and 2012, which totalled 65,556 metres of rotary air blast, reverse circulation and directional drilling, in 541 drill holes.”

Panthera said the drill programme would also examine the coarse gold component of the mineralisation via the accelerated cyanide leach technique ‘LeachWell’.

“The data generated from the LeachWell programme will complement Moydow's assessment of whether historical assay results have potentially under-reported the gold grades, although there can be no certainty that this has occurred.

“In addition to the resource estimate drilling, 2,600 metres of drilling will target new exploration targets at Labola.”

At 1243 BST, shares in Panthera Resources were up 10% at 14.85p.