Woodbois Regulatory News (WBI)

9 Jul 2009 12:25



9 July 2009

OBTALA RESOURCES PLC ("Obtala" or the "Company")

Strong Gold Results from Trenching at the Buckreef Licence, Tanzania

The Board of Obtala Resources, the AIM quoted mineral exploration and development company, is pleased to provide the market with an update on the results from trenching programme conducted over the Buckreef licence in Northern Tanzania within the Lake Victoria Goldfields. 

Highlights

Strong gold grades of 201g/t and 71.5g/t reported from two, one-meter horizontal trench samples

Confirms the presence of a high grade gold bearing system

Detailed ground magnetic survey completed over area of interest

Detailed surface mapping over area of interest completed

Anomaly occurs 4km west of IAMGOLD's Buckreef Gold Mine and 30km southwest of the multimillion ounce Geita Gold Mine owned by AngloGold-Ashanti

Details of programme

A short programme limited to three trenches totalling 300 linear meters was completed in June 2009, with the trench locations based on earlier soil geochemistry results. The objective of the trenching, supported by an in-house ground magnetic survey over the area, was to provide additional sampling and geological data with which to assist in the interpretation of the sub-cropping structure and lithological contacts (please refer to announcement dated 16th March 2009). 

The trench and mapping exercise exposed a thick, pervasive laterite cap, covering most of the licence. This cap is often in excess of 3m thick and suspected to be much deeper locally. The effect of the laterite is to blanket the sub-cropping mineralisation as evident in trenches BUC_T1 and BUC_T2, where the laterite was not successfully penetrated and no results of interest were returned. Trench BUC_T3 however passed through the indurated laterite cap and exposed the basal broken laterite with quartz veins and banded ironstone formation (BIF) fragments, returning the following results;

Results from Trench BUT_T3, using a 0.1g.t Au cut-off.

Click to view map of Buckreef trench locations (PDF attached)

http://www.rns-pdf.londonstockexchange.com/rns/4106V_-2009-7-9.pdf

Observations of BIF within the trench combined with the analysis of gold, together with the interpretation of the magnetic survey data highlighting the presence of structures, dykes and possibly extensive BIF sub-crop makes this an exciting prospect. An analogy may be drawn with the 14.6Moz Geita deposit where mineralisation is closely associated with the presence of BIF units.

The trenches were manually excavated to an average depth of 2m below the surface with a total of 355 samples collected as continuous channel samples manually collected from the northern side wall, of each trench, approximately 0.3m above the trench floor. A total of 31 quality control and assurance samples were included with the sample submissions to the laboratory representing 9% of the total number of samples collected. 

All samples were submitted to ALS Chemex (ALS) laboratories in Mwanza, Tanzania. ALS has preparation facilities in Mwanza with the prepared samples being dispatched to their analytical facility in Vancouver, Canada for analysis. All samples were analyzed for gold using the Au-ICP21 method (fire assay with ICP-AES) and ICP-ME41 multi-element analysis. Samples returning gold values of greater than 0.1g/t were submitted for Au-GRA21 analysis (fire assay and gravimetric finish).

The Buckreef licence covers an area of 16.46km2 and is located 120km southwest of Mwanza, Tanzania's 3rd largest city situated on the shores of Lake Victoria, and 4km west of the Buckreef Gold Mine, currently being evaluated by IAMGold. The town of Geita lies 30km northeast of the licence area and is home to the multi-million ounce Geita Gold Mine owned by AngloGold Ashanti.

Frank Scolaro, Chairman of Obtala, commented that "the results from Trench BUC_T3 are very encouraging when considering that large areas of the licence are covered by the laterite cap which may form a blanket masking any sub-cropping mineralisation. So far we have only excavated three trenches over what is potentially a much larger target based on the soil geochemistry. This is a new zone of mineralisation that has not previously been tested or discovered by either trenching or drilling and presents an exciting new prospect for Obtala. The Buckreef licence is positioned ideally in a world-class gold producing region, with operations nearby including AngloGold Ashanti. We remain fully funded to continue exploring this prospect and are confident of realising shareholder value in the future."

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