(Alliance News) - Aura Energy Ltd on Thursday said it has begun a data review and field activities at its gold, base, and battery metal tenements in Mauritania.
Shares in the Australia-based minerals firm were up 3.3% at 0.48 pence in London on Thursday afternoon.
Work has included field inspections and geological mapping, as well as reviewing previous drill data for gold and nickel cobalt projects.
Field activities recently began with an initial inspection, intended to find artisanal mining sites and "determine the extent of outcrop and assess access to enable planning of further evaluation activities."
Compiling and re-interpreting data gathered from previous exploration campaigns highlighted additional gold intersections on the Ghassariat prospect, located around 1.5 kilometres from the previous mineralisated section and suggesting a possible "large mineralised gold system".
This reinterpretation also pointed out the presence "of a large untested magnetic anomaly on the Bella prospect" which has been interpreted as reflecting "an unusually large ultramafic complex prospective for nickel and cobalt". A single line of bedrock drilling at the anomaly has found strong values for nickel and cobalt.
Further, the complex within Bella contains another five "lines of previously proposed drilling" yet to take place.
There are also strong nickel, cobalt, and copper values at the Taet permit which were not previously reported. Taet intercepts include strong values for copper, potentially indicating nickel sulphides.
In terms of funding, Aura has begun approaching "several of the world's leading royalty companies" and is engaging with "several companies" over listed shells that might be used for Aura's gold assets. Aura is also reviewing a separate initial public offering for its gold assets.
Aura Energy Executive Chair Peter Reeve said: "These extremely under-explored greenstone belts with high quality preliminary gold exploration results deserve a substantial and ongoing funding source to reveal their potential. With the 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.
"The current global economic uncertainty driving the gold price provides the perfect environment for a separate vehicle to hold these strongly undervalued assets."
By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com
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Aura Egy (AURA)