Cashed-up Ampella to embark on big exploration spend

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THE DRILL SERGEANT: Having recently raised $45 million via a placement of new shares, Ampella Mining has working capital squirrelled away of almost $55 million.

The healthy bank account has provided the impetus for budget approvals for $25.3 million, which will be used by Ampella to fund a large exploration push at the company’s Batie West gold project in Burkina Faso, West Africa.

 

Location diagram of Ampella’s Batie West project covering 2600sqkm where
it intends spending $25.3M on exploration in 2012. Source: Company
announcement

The current focus for exploration programs in 2012 is to complete large regional auger and aircore drilling programs along the 150 kilometre Batie West Shear Zone.

These will consist of a proposed 144,000 metres of auger geochemistry drilling that will cover the remaining untested northern regions of the Batie West Shear Zone and include the company’s three newly-acquired permits, Kaldera, Passena and Timboura.

The new permits are situated north west of the JORC-compliant 3.1 million ounce Konkera gold resource, which includes an Indicated Resource of 30 million tonnes at 1.6 grams per tonne gold for 1.5 million ounces gold and an Inferred Resource of 31.8Mt at 1.5g/t gold for 1.6 million ounces gold.

Auger drilling will also be used for first pass geochemical tests of the new permit called Kpere, south of Konkera.

Ampella’s 2012 drilling will also entail approximately 127,000 metres of aircore drilling with aircore rig currently drilling at a number of gold anomalies identified on Ampella’s Gbingbina and Mabera permits.
 
An estimated 88,000m of reverse-circulation (RC) drilling and 7,300m of diamond drilling has been proposed to follow up previous scout drilling and infill programs.

Infill drilling has also been allocated to what the company considers to be ‘near mine’ prospects at Kouglaga West and Konkera East.

In addition to these $25.3 million regional exploration programs, Ampella also intends continuing a number of separate drill programs associated with feasibility studies on the Konkera gold resource.

 “The approval of $25.3 million by the Ampella Board to continue aggressive regional exploration programs highlights the company’s belief in the Batie West project where we have identified 3.1 million ounces of gold at the Konkera Resource in a three year period on ground which has never previously been explored,” Ampella Mining managing director Dr Paul Kitto said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“Our focused aggressive regional exploration programs in 2012 over untested areas along the 150 kilometre long Batie West Shear Zone aim to identify the next generation of potential gold targets.”