Hi KickingGoals,
I think you're asking a fair question. First thing you've got to understand is that Alicanto actually has 3 project areas and to the best of my understanding the follow information is true.
1) Arakaka Gold Project
Alicanto 100% ownership until Barrick spend US$10 million. Thereafter Alicanto 35%/ Barrick 65% (unless Alicanto decides to dilute further)
2) Ianna Gold Project
Alicanto has the rights to acquire 100% of the property subject to the terms and conditions announced on 26 July 2016.
3) Tassawini Gold Project
This is a curious one because it doesn't get promoted in company presentations or on their website but the tenements still appear as assets of the company in the last quarterly report.
The Tassawini Gold project contains an NI 43-101 and JORC resource of 12.7Mt at 1.2g/t Au for 499,000oz. I don't think the resource is compliant with current JORC requirements so would need to be upgraded. See this post I've previously made on the subject for more discussion.
http://hotcopper.com.au/threads/ali....2803824/page-2?post_id=18174082#.V6MiCaNJntQ
I think people should start to tone down their expectations of the initial results from the first round of exploration drilling at Arakaka. The project is very large scale and the nature of exploration is such that it would be unreasonable that the best results/discoveries will come from the first round of drilling. Exploration is iterative and exploration results are built one upon another.
Below is an image showing some results from then 14 mile area released in Sept 2014.
They give an idea of the general tenor of results that have come from the main structural corridor.
View attachment 215596
Here is a drill section from the Gold Hill prospect in the 14 mile area (also from Sept 2014 quarterly).
View attachment 215597
Now some of these results are pretty OK IMO but probably wouldn't knock the socks off the market if they were released tomorrow. You need to look at any individual results in the context of the scale of the main structural corridor. The Gold Hill prospect for example is centred around one of many artisanal pits (this one being about 250m long and 200m wide) in the 14 mile area which itself has multiple parallel interpreted mineralised zones over 2-3km all within the broader and longer main structural zone which is over 12km long (the first and main target in the Arakaka Gold project area). The current drilling is targeting areas further to the south west in the Pepper Pot and Purple Heart areas. I'd imagine they will have chosen areas where they might expect to get good results but being exploration nothing is absolutely certain and we have to expect a certain amount of learning as we go forward. Impatient investors who sell on seemingly disappointing results (ie results that don't knock the socks off) might be missing the bigger picture. Barrick must be hunting for size and it will take time for them to figure out if these prospects have a chance of delivering. Normally these big companies look for the footprint of size. If they don't see the footprint of a big deposit they tend to walk away. They'll be less interested in drilling out smaller and mid-sized individual deposits the same way a small exploration company would. The trick here will be in reading the signs from where they keep placing the drill and how deep they drill. Good luck everybody. Eshmun
