I came across this gem, a few weeks ago when I was reading the Morila transactions to get a sense of timeline but came across something interesting about the Samacline Zones (cant wait to do some exploration, and i dont think this effected by the dewatering, so we can drill while this is happening)
In the August 2020 announcement:
https://malilithium.com/pdfs/MaliLithiumToAcquireMorilaGoldMineToBecomeProducer31Aug20.pdfIt mentions below:
Exploration PotentialThere is extensive prior drilling at the Morila mine
OUTSIDE the current Mineral Resource which requires interpretation and infill and extension drilling. Similarly, underground targets beneath Morila have yet to be fully evaluated.
The best example is the Samacline zone where deeper drilling has returned high grade results including 5 metres at 31.5 g/t gold, 17 metres at 4.9 g/t gold and 35 metres at 3.0 g/t gold.I did some research, here is a quote from a transcript from the conference call back in 2005:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/5111-full-transcript-of-randgold-resources-3q05-conference-call-q-and-a-goldQ: Victor Flores:
Do you expect to add further ounces at Samacline as you drill to the west of that.
A: Mark Bristow:
With Samacline it’s certainly going to add ounces. Samacline is deep and at this stage it’s a 3 to 400,000 ounce resource. Our advice to management, and we’ve got support from everyone, is let’s not chase that at the moment. What we really need to chase is the extensions or new projects. So although we are going to continue, as I say in my report, working on the Samacline, the big drive is to get drill rigs into some anomalies. We’ve got a couple of geophysical anomalies, some big arsenic anomalies that we’ve never drilled – that we’re going to go back and drill now. So we’ve all put our heads together – we’ve been working on it for a while – and both we and the Anglo team are on the same page and we’ve got a new guy to lead the team. I think we are going to put some money into this business.
Here is another quote from from mine operations report:
https://landmatrix.org/media/uploads/randgoldresourcescomsitesrandgoldresourcesfilesrrl20annual20report_morila20operationspdf.pdfAt Samacline, a review of the deep zone ofmineralisation located to the immediate west of Morila identified open, high grade mineralisation within awide, low grade envelope of up to 80m in width.
The untested area down dip to the west of Samacline is large enough to hold a Morila-type deposit
At the Samacline target, 850 metres west of the current pit, previous drilling intersected 30 metres at 7.22g/t, including 5 metres at 31.54g/t, with 1 metre at 139.1g/t (SAN364), and 4 metres at 35.99g/t including 1 metre at 138.0g/t (SAN270). SAM001, a 650 metre deep hole has been drilled, confirming the model, where mineralisation locates within a gentle, north to north-northeast trending antiformal hinge within the main flat lying Morila shear zone. Assay results returned 21 metres at 1.6g/t (from 503 metres) including 5 metres at 3.26g/t.My opinion it was never fully fleshed out was because underground operation might have been costly for them at the time, as well as having other derisked projects to focus, the closure of the mine the reason why it was never pursued, because Samacline gets an mention in several annual reports but always a one liner that they wanted to do further exploration. Probably nail in the coffin was when they got bought out by Barrick that they had a different strategic approach and was going to close the mine when the tailings/domba were exhausted.
Timeline wise not sure where is Samacline is at because it only gets a one line mention in FFX docus, koting/ntiola/viper are being drilled currently, and I hope this Samacline target gets drilled next while we wait for Morila to be dewatered. All in all, this for me has added a new boost to my investment thesis which I wasnt aware of before
(20min delay)