opinion please re barra resources, page-9

Gold find a bit rich?Article from: Font size: Decrease Increase Email article: Email Print article: Print Submit comment: Submit comment By Peter Gosnell

December 22, 2007 12:00am

MONSTER gold strike! Bonanza grades! Eureka! Hoax? What's to be made of Barra Resources' announcement yesterday.

The Western Australia-based mineral explorer alerted the investing public through a notice to the stock exchange that it had struck the richest vein of gold ever discovered at its Burbanks underground mine near Coolgardie.

In miner's parlance, Barra hit a gold intersection yielding 10,300g of gold per tonne - or more than 10kg per tonne.

The company believes it is one of the most spectacular gold discoveries in Australian resources history.

"I have been drilling for two decades around the Kambalda-Kalgoorlie gold province and cannot recall any intersection of this magnitude," managing director Dean Goodwin said.

He said the next largest intersection he had seen - graded at 4400g per tonne - was found when he was working for Western Mining at the Intrepid deposit under the Lake Lefroy project, close to Kalgoorlie.

"I think Western Mining still holds the record for the highest intersection," he said.

"This 10,300g per tonne just blew me away. It just eclipses anything that I've ever seen.



"Barra will now intensify its drilling around this new discovery as it is nowhere near Burbanks' previous historical underground workings and is well below current mine development."

Barra said the drilling was only made possible by the recent completion of the company's extensive decline development at Burbanks in readiness for resumption of full scale production next year.

"It was only because the decline work provided new drilling platform opportunities from depth that we could even access deeper and until now, unexplored areas below the mine."

A Chamber of Minerals and Energy spokesman would not comment on a specific company or mine development but at first did not believe the news, suspecting it could be a prank.

Mr Goodwin said there had been no drilling anywhere in the vicinity of the hole in question "and it remains wide open", so the full extent of the mineralisation system is unknown.

According to Barra, Burbanks has produced more than 366,000 ounces of gold, predominantly from above 150m vertical depth, from both historical underground mine workings and modern open pits.

Shares in Barra, which is unhedged, spiked as as high as 37.5c but finished 6.5c, or 22 per cent higher, at 35c.