Giyani Gold has entered into agreements to acquire five exploration licenses in the Giyani Archean Greenstone Belt located in the northeastern region of South Africa. These properties consist of more than 170 square kilometers of highly prospective greenstone belt with six past producing mines.
These licences contain five former producing mines which were only developed at the shallow depths of less than 250 metres from surface. A limited amount of drilling on one mine was done in the 1990’s and no other geophysical surveys were used to guide exploration. Past production from all the mines is estimated to be approximately 450,000 ounces based on historical records. Grades at the Louis Moore mine are reported to be as high as 21 grams per tonne according to the Company`s joint venture partner Corridor Mining Resources, a provincial government mining company.
The Giyani Archean Greenstone Belt (“GAGB“) is Archean in age (3,300 million years) and contains similar rock suites found in Canadian gold producing greenstone belts such as Timmins, Hemlo, Red Lake, and Thompson Bouquet Camp, Val d’Or. Combined production from this gold producing region of Canada exceeds 170 million ounces.
Ground geophysical surveys and mapping will be used to do an initial evaluation to trace the potential on these licences. This is a considerable distance along strike and at depth to discover new gold zones in a variety of settings within the ultramafic, mafic volcanic and felsic volcanic suites.
Geological Overview
The Giyani Greenstone belt consists of four geological units known to host gold, including quartz veins with sulphide developments, banded iron formations, quartz and sulphide replacement veins, and quartzite schist (sericite schist). To date, the economically viable ore bodies are located within the garnet rich meta-quartzite chemical sediments or volcanics with associated interbedding of banded iron formations and its sulphide facies enrichment. This metamorphosed volcanic-sedimentary sequence, known as the Giyani Group, comprises of components of serpentinite, amphibole, chlorite, talc shists and amphibolite and is overlain by a felsic volcanics and sediments (tuffs) with rhyolite (acid lava), tuff, phyllite, with banded ironstones and meta-quartzite. The Giyani Gold assets have previous been privately owned. Modern geological techniques and technology have not been used for exploration over these assets.
Exploration Programs
Giyani Gold has planned and is conducting an extensive exploration program for the Giyani Gold Project. This consists of airborne and ground geophysical surveys, geological mapping, as well as extensive drill programs designed to re-establish historical zones of mineralization and to explore for extensions (at depth and at strike) and parallel zones within the areas of interest.
Giyani Gold completed a 60 km ground geophysical program (Max/Min, VLF Electromagnetic & Magnetometer) over the Rock Island Properties in April 2012. In addition, an induced polarization (IP) was completed in June 2012. The airborne survey is expected to be conducted in the second half of 2012.
2012 Drill Program
Giyani Gold’s initial drilling program in South Africa will commence at the Klein Letaba and Frankie projects. Over 30 drill sites have been selected at the Klein Letaba and Frankie mine site targeting new structures identified from the extensive geophysical surveys recently completed. Completed drill sites are identified on the map in Figure 1 below. Three of the sites will involve multiple drill holes.
Drilling will initially commence near to the original mine shaft of the Klein Letaba gold mine then backing up to intersect the Middle Zone and Frankie zones shown in Figure 1. This Phase I 6,000 m drill program will assist Giyani Gold in determining the location of holes for future drilling programs to quickly define a NI 43-101 compliant resource/reserve.
The core will be split and logged at Giyani Gold’s new core logging facility in a secure compound in the vicinity of Giyani, South Africa. Assaying and sample preparation will be conducted at ALS Chemex in Johannesburg, South Africa.
R.S. Middleton, VP of Exploration for Giyani Gold Corp., is responsible for the drilling program including the core logging, sampling of the drill core and assay procedures and quality assurance/quality control measures.
Figure 1 - Klein Letaba-Frankie 2012 Drill Program and Mineralization Trends
Figure 2 - Possible Fault Offset of Klein Letaba Mine Vein System
The existence of this fault was speculated by earlier operators who viewed evidence of the fault in the lower levels of the historic mine. Giyani Gold is now planning to drill a 600-650m hole to locate the offset of the entire Klein Letaba Mine and re-discover the 5 historically mined veins and the new high grade discovery made in Hole KL-01 (13.162 g/tonne Au over 15.1m) down plunge from the mine.
Figure 3 - Longitudinal section of Hole KL-20 intersection of Vein 6 and Historic Mine Workings of Klein Letaba Mine