Shield awarded new West African licences

  African-focused Australian explorer Shield Mining is continuing to build its exposure to the mineral potential of Mauritania, with the granting of additional exploration ground near existing gold and copper mines.The two new licences, for gold and base metals exploration in Mauritania, take Shield’s total landholding under licence in the country to approximately 15,000sqkm, making the company one of the most dominant licence holders in the West African country.One of the granted exploration licences, 447 B2, spans 1,460sqkm and is located on strike of the Tasiast Gold Mine, owned and operated by Redback Mining. The geology of this area is a complexly folded BIF/ultramafic intrusive sequence, similar to the horizon and host rock of Tasiast, 50km to the north. The previous owner, Normandy La-Source, delineated substantial gold-in-soil geochemical anomalies on the property.The second granted exploration licence, 448 B2, spans 749sqkm, is located near the Guelb Moghrein Copper Mine, and was previously held by SNIM, which is the West African government-owned iron ore company. Shield Mining’s Chief Executive Officer, David Netherway said these are among the most prospective of the licences granted to date and add further strategic value to the company’s land position in Mauritania.“As the new licences take to 11 the number secured by the company, we have now achieved a quantum in the size of our geographic footprint, and commodity spread, that is best able to host serious exploration momentum within our Mauritanian holdings,” Mr Netherway said.Shield said work will commence on the new licence areas in the New Year, with a program of mapping and soil sampling.Following encouraging exploration results, diversified Pilbara explorer, Warwick Resources has commenced a reverse circulation drilling program on its wholly owned Jimblebar gold project near Newman.Warwick Resources Managing Director, Bruce McQuitty said recent aircore drilling, rock chip sampling and soil sampling programs had identified seven promising new gold targets that will be the subject of further investigation. “These results represent further exploration progress for Warwick Resources and vindicate the extensive exploration program we have in place across the historic Jimblebar region,” Mr McQuitty said. Warwick is targeting predominantly open pit gold resources at Jimblebar, initially focusing on the Sunny South Prospect where shallow high-grade intersections have been identified. The company said the current reverse circulation drilling program will also target the previously mined Shearer’s prospect for the first time. A total of 111 aircore drill holes, 110 soil samples and 108 rock chip samples tested a 5km strike length of the Jimblebar mineralised trend on 100m to 400m spaced traverses in order to identify geochemical anomalies for subsequent drill targeting. Warwick used aircore drilling to obtain samples of weathered bedrock in areas of transported cover, employing soil sampling in areas with limited amounts of outcrop and taking rock chip samples in areas where soil was absent, such as on the Jimblebar range of hills.