smh article

Some press maybe helpful Tuesday after a great Monday.

Well done all those who have followed for soe ling.


Perseus comes up trumps againBARRY FITZGERALD
November 17, 2009
IT IS a good time to be releasing tantalising gold exploration results thanks to the surge in gold prices, even if the results come from a gold property in the faraway West African nation of Ivory Coast.

That proved true for Perseus Mining yesterday. The shares of the Perth explorer were driven 25c or 15.6 per cent higher to $1.85 on the release of its broad and high-grade drill results from the Sissingue prospect at its Tengrela gold project, immediately south of the 6.8 million ounce Syama and Finkalo gold projects owned by others.

The share price rise carried the company's market capitalisation to more than $590 million, which will please Macquarie Group.

The investment banking combine has been a long-time backer of the stock and a bunch of other ASX-listed explorers that have made West Africa's untapped potential their focus instead of the crowded and heavily explored gold regions of Australia.

Perseus reported that best results from latest drilling on the Sissingue prospect had returned hits of 66 metres grading five grams of gold a tonne and 78 metres grading 3.2 grams a tonne.

But analysts said the real excitement was that Perseus now had the potential to become an annual producer of 350,000 to 400,000 ounces of gold within three years.

Tengrela is the company's second string project. The main event is its $US148 million ($158 million) Ayanfuri gold development in Ghana. First production from the Ayanfuri deposit is expected in the third quarter of 2011 at an initial rate of 230,000 ounces a year.

Ayanfuri has reserves of 2.1 million ounces of gold and additional resources of 3.16 million ounces.

Until the latest results from Tengrela, the market had been factoring it in as a likely 100,000 ounce-a-year producer from 2012. But that had been based on a 838,000 ounce resource.

The company was not saying so yesterday, but analysts were happy to predict that continued exploration was likely to enlarge the resource base substantially.

BGF Equities said there was every reason to expect 2 to 3 million ounces eventually.

Perseus said that given the current gold price strength there was a ''compelling case to fast-track'' a study of the development of Sissingue.