QUARTERLY REPORT: 27 January 2015
27 JUNE 2016
AURA ENERGY EXPANDS MINERAL FOOTPRINT IN MAURITANIA ON HIGH POTENTIAL UNDER-EXPLORED ARCHEAN GREENSTONE BELTS
HIGH QUALITY GOLD PROSPECTS ACQUIRED ALONG TREND FROM AN OPERATING +20 MILLION OUNCE DEPOSIT
MULTI MILLION OUNCE GOLD & BASE METAL POTENTIAL ALONG 45 KMs OF GREENSTONE BELT WITH STRONG DRILL RESULTS
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Aura Energy has secured rights to acquire 2 exploration permits on extensive Archean Greenstone belts in Mauritania along strike from Kinross' +20 Moz Tasiast Gold Mine
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Excellent early stage drilling results showing both system size and elevated gold grades
Aura Energy Limited (AEE) is pleased to announce that it has secured rights to acquire 175 km2 covering two under-explored mineralised greenstone belts in Mauritania (See Fig 1). The areas lie along strike from Kinross' giant Tasiast Gold Mine and also from Algold's Tijirit gold deposits. The two areas are currently held under exploration permit applications and are expected to be granted in the near future.
These highly prospective gold areas represent an excellent opportunity in lightly explored Archean greenstone belts and will leverage Aura's extensive operating experience in this part of the world. The project is favourably located 200 km from Aura's Nouakchott office, 60 km from the coast, and can be managed efficiently within the company's existing management resources without distraction from Aura's core uranium focus.
The prospects cover portions of the Tasiast and Tijirit Greenstone Belts and have been only been explored previously by one other company which was forced to suspend activities in the mineral industry downturn in 2012, despite having located zones of significant gold mineralisation. Members of Aura's current technical team were involved in this previous work and are well acquainted with the area.
Figure 1: Location of the Tasiast South project
Aura's Tasiast South project area has the following attributes;
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Tenements over two lightly explored greenstone belts covering 175 km2
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The +20 Moz Tasiast gold deposit is nearby on the same greenstone belt and highlights the potential for major deposits in the region (See Fig 2)
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$3m has been expended by the previous explorer on airborne geophysics, reverse circulation and air-core drilling, and sampling
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Broad zones of gold mineralisation have been identified with strong similarities to the Tasiast Gold Mine mineralisation and alteration
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No testing deeper than 150m with most previous holes less than 100m
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High grade drill intersections have been reported by others in the district from both past and current programs, including one in progress with Algold Resources (TSX), which highlight the current interest and potential in these poorly tested belts
Figure 2: Location of Aura areas in relation to known mineralisation
Peter Reeve, Aura Energy's Executive Chairman said "It is almost an anachronism in these days of modern exploration to find an extremely under-explored Greenstone belt in a mining friendly country with such high quality preliminary gold exploration results. With the large Tasiast Gold Mine on the same belt just north of our project, the potential for multi- million ounce discoveries, in the eyes of our technical people, is very conceivable".
"We will not be distracted from our core focus in Mauritania which remains getting the Tiris Uranium Project into production as soon as possible. However we are very comfortable that, given our extensive knowledge of Mauritania, the association of our technical people with the project and the fact that it can be managed from existing resources, this presents a high quality opportunity in a country we know well and rate highly as a mining destination. It is a rare opportunity, in our opinion, to add significant shareholder value for Aura Energy", Mr Reeve continued.
Air-core drilling to bedrock by the previous explorer located several anomalous gold zones, up to eight kilometres in length (See Fig 3). Of particular interest is the Ghassariat Zone, which has 1-3 g/t gold values on three of the four air-core traverses drilled. This anomaly extends over about eight kilometres parallel to the strike of the greenstone belt.
The Ghassariat Prospect intersections occur in strongly sulphidic and quartz-veined mafic volcanics and have marked similarities with some of the ore zones and near-ore alteration zones at the neighbouring Kinross Tasiast Mine (See Fig 4).
Figure 3: Ghassariat Zone location and gold anomalous zones defined by air core drilling
Drilling to date has generally been very shallow with a near absence of deeper testing below the air core drilling. A very small number of RC holes have provided very good results however the density of drilling is very low averaging approximately one hole per 20 km2. A systematic program to ensure both deeper drilling under existing drill results and further shallow drilling on new targets highlights the long term prospectively on these tenements.
Intersections in the Ghassariat Zone reported by the previous explorer include:
TGRC 022 - 71m @ 0.3 g/t Au including:
5m @ 1.2 g/t Au,
3m @ 1.0 g/t Au
11m @ 0.5 g/t Au
TGRC 007 - 38m @ 0.4 g/t Au including:
1m @ 6.1 g/t Au
6m @ 0.7 g/t Au