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(Alliance News) - Oriole Resources PLC on Monday said sampling results at its 90%-owned Mbe orogenic gold project in Cameroon has revealed "very strong results", and that BCM International Ltd has now confirmed it has completed its due-diligence review at the project.
Shares in Oriole rose 33% to 0.50 pence each in London on Monday morning.
The west Africa-focused gold exploration company said results have returned 155 samples grading equal to or greater than 1 gramme per tonne of gold at the Mbe project, 13 of which have graded more than 10 g/t of gold.
Additionally, Ghana-based mining and civil contractor, BCM, has confirmed to Oriole that it's due-diligence review is now complete and consequently, the conditions of the Mbe earn-in agreementh have been satisfied.
Now that the agreement is unconditional, Oriole expects to receive USD1 million in signature payments from BCM before the end of February.
Back in November, Oriole signed a heads of terms deal with BCM relating to earn-ins at its Cameroonian Bibemi and Mbe gold projects. Oriole currently holds a 93% and 90% stake in the projects, respectively.
In early January, the company inked an earn-in agreement with BCM for the Bibemi project, and last week, it announced a definitive earn-in for Mbe. The company previously identified a 12 kilometre-long gold-in-soils anomaly at Mbe, which had delivered "several zones of significant surface gold mineralisation".
In exchange for a 50% interest in Mbe, it was agreed that BCM would provide a USD1 million signature payment, alongside USD4 million in exploration costs and future success-based payments.
USD50,000 of the signature payment had been received in advance by Oriole, and the company said that the remainder and earn-in agreement terms would remain conditional on BCM completing its due-diligence review of Mbe before the end of January.
Combined with the Bibemi earn-in, it was established that Oriole would receive a total of USD1.5 million in signature payments and USD8 million in exploration costs and future payments for the two north-Cameroonian prospects.
Oriole Chief Executive Officer Tim Livesey said: "With two of our key projects now fully funded, we are able to progress exciting district-scale exploration at Mbe in parallel with the resource definition and expansion programmes at Bibemi. This promises to deliver plenty of news flow in the coming months."
By Sabrina Penty, Alliance News reporter
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