Kodyel Geology

The 100% owned Kodyel permit covers 238 square kilometres and lies close to the Niger border approximately 300km east of Ouagadougou.  Access is by paved road as far as Fada N’gourma about 200km east of Ouagadougou and thence by laterite roads.  The Kodyel permit covers an extension of the Sirba greenstone belt that hosts the Samira Hill gold mine just across the border in Niger.  The Kodyel permit is traversed by a regional northeast-trending fault that stretches from Ghana to Niger and separates the mafic and felsic volcanics and metasedimentary rocks of the Fada belt from the migmatites and granites to the northwest.  There are several active artisanal workings within the permit, including: Hantekoura (CFA), Kodyel 1, and Tangounga.

The Kodyel 1 site consists of a large cut 70 metres long and up to 40 metres wide, exploiting strongly kaolinitized and sheared rocks hosting white and rose quartz veins in a zone striking to the northeast and dipping to the northwest and southeast. Kodyel 1 was explored by SEMAFO from  1996 to 1998. They completed 9 trenches and 13,529 metres of drilling on a quartz stockwork, defining a mineralized zone 265 metres long, 50 to 100 metres wide and 70 metres deep.  The drilling was largely vertical Rotary Air Blast (or RAB) holes at 25 metre centres, though 32 angled holes were also drilled into the zone. Grades were reported to be in excess of 1 gpt Au. They followed with 1597 metres of diamond drilling in 12 holes in 1997. SEMAFO calculated a historic preliminary resource of 753,000 tonnes grading 3.1 g/t Au.  The estimate, made in 1998 prior to the adoption of NI 43-101, is not compliant with NI 43-101 guidelines and should not be relied upon. Modelling does show that continuity of mineralization is weak to depth and along strike to the northeast.  Mineralization apparently remains open to the southwest.

The Hantekoura orpaillage consists of a series of pits and cuts oriented at 060^o over 550 metres strike length.  Mineralization consists of quartz veins, 5 – 25 centimetres thick, hosted in intermediate tuffs near the granite contact.  Hantekoura (CFA) was explored by SEMAFO from  1996 to 1998. A RAB program of 61 inclined holes was completed to depths of from 8 metres to 30 metres over a grid of 500 metres by 150 metres covering the Hantekoura orpaillage site. Results were generally less than 1.2 g/t Au, found in quartz veinlets hosted in saprolite derived from intermediate tuffs. An anomaly to the northeast of CFA site was identified and further RAB drilling proposed. No further work on the CFA Prospect is noted.

The BLEG prospect consists of a large Bottle Leach Extractable Gold (or BLEG) anomaly through the centre of the claim block. There has also been some historic soil grid follow-up. Between the two surveys, a regional anomaly 16 kilometres by 2 kilometres has been defined.

Tangounga hosts multiple massive quartz veins each 1-5 metres wide outcropping over more than 400 metres strike length.  Local miners have been working to a depth of over 25 metres in an artisanal working now 200 metres long by 30 metres wide by 15 metres deep.  Highlights of grab samples of quartz from artisanal gold mining sites on veining, and alteration, within intermediate tuffs and highly altered, sheared and kaolinized felsic volcanics include 7 gpt Au and 9 gpt Au.  Large grey quartz knobs stand out at the southwest end of the pit but  conventional artisanal mining pits continue for many 10’s of metres to the southwest. Similarly, pits continue to the northeast. A large part of the permit including the major Tangounga artisanal mining site remains unexplored.

The Company conducted an airborne magnetic and radiometric survey in February and a limited sampling program in March. Results are pending. The Kodyel permit is now on a temporary suspension from the Burkina Faso Ministry of Mines in connection with the dispute between Burkina Faso and Niger as to the exact location of the border between the two countries in the area proximate to the Kodyel property.