gaining traction ....

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/be-picky-with-gold-plays/story-fnciil7d-1226695917098

Regarding OBS:

ORBIS GOLD (OBS)

" LOTS of gold has been found in west Africa by ASX-listed companies and others but on the whole, it is low-grade. The mid-point on the grade curve of west African deposits is 1.5g/tonne.

Orbis in the meantime has been gaining a reputation as the high-grade ASX company in west African gold. That has been rubbing off on its share price, which has moved from 12c in late June to 35c yesterday. It is now a $76 million company, up from $26m in late June.

Last week it announced a maiden resource for its Natougou gold discovery in southeast Burkina Faso. And it didn't disappoint, coming in at 1.8 million ounces (15 million tonnes at 3.7g/tonne gold), with plenty of exploration upside to be tested.

Natougou is also near to the surface and flat-lying, making it amenable to a large-scale, open-cut mine that combines the benefits of a better than average gold grade.

Orbis also has the higher-grade Nabanga gold deposit (660,000 ounces from 3.2 million tonnes grading 6.5g/tonne) in its Burkina Faso mineral resource inventory.

That 2.5 million ounce inventory has been put together by Orbis (previously Mt Isa Metals) in the past two or three years, which only goes to show that west Africa hasn't lost it when it comes to giving juniors a chance at rapid growth. That Orbis's finds are on the high-grade side of things is all the better.

Cheering Orbis on is DGR Global (DGR). It owns 17.8 per cent of Orbis (39 million shares). Because it was recently able to pull in $1.95m to fund its investment activities over the next year, it has told the market that under its current business plan it does not see the need to raise funds from asset disposals. So on that, the DGR stake is sticky for the time being.

But there are no guarantees in all that and it has to be wondered if the initial scale and high-grade nature of the Natougou discovery could see DGR bid for its stake by a west African goldmining specialist in the near-term. "