Viking drilling increases Ghana confidence

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THE DRILL SERGEANT: Drilling at West Africa focused Viking Ashanti’s 100% owned Akoase East gold project in Ghana has provided the company with confidence the existing 500,000 ounce JORC classified gold resource will be increased.

Viking Ashanti recently received assay results from three RC pre‐collared diamond holes and five RC holes from the current program.

At the northern end of the Akoase resource, a step out RC hole, 50 metres northeast of the limit of previous drilling returned highly encouraging intersections of 5m at 1.94 grams per tonne gold and 8m at 2.22 g/t gold.

Viking said the hole combined with previous drilling results to demonstrate multiple zones of mineralization continue northeast immediately along strike of the current resource at Akoase, and that potential exists for extending the resource in this area.

The hole terminated in mineralization and has been extended with a diamond core tail.

“Assay results from the remaining RC and RC precollared diamond holes, drilled to either extend the existing resource at depth, or to test mineralized zones on the eastern margin of main structural corridor, continue to intersect multiple zones of mineralization, at gold grades comparable to the average resource grade,” Viking Ashanti said in its ASX announcement.

Better intersections received from the drilling assays include 18m at 1.30 g/t gold and 3m at@ 2.71 g/t gold, and 4m at 1.92 g/t gold and 1m at 4.87 g/t gold.

Half of the planned 3,000m RC drilling program for the Akoase SW prospect has been completed.

This program has been designed to test 1.5 strike kilometres of the Akoase structural trend immediately to the south west and along strike from the current resource.

A further four strike kilometres of the main Akoase structural trend extending to the southern licence boundary remains to be drill tested.

Viking Ashanti said its primary objective, as it has been since listing, remains to increase the existing 500,000 JORC classified resource at Akoase East and its other Ghanaian gold projects including West Star and Blue River to over one million ounces by mid-2012.