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Kerboulé - Burkina Faso

Map of West Africa

Fig 1. Artisinal diggings at Kerboulé

Concordia owns 100% of the Kerboulé property (containing the Araé and Gassel Manéré licenses) which cover a total area of 400 km2 in the Soum province in northern Burkina Faso. These licenses were renewed in 2010 and are now into their second cycle of three years of exploration rights.

 
RAB ‘Step out drilling’ investigations

A 2011 work program for the Kerboulé property was recommended by SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. in its Independent Technical Report dated 28 July 2011. The objective of the program was to complete the acquisition of reconnaissance exploration work over the entire property to identify new gold mineralization targets in largely unexplored parts of the licences, to undertake ‘step-out’ RAB drilling to investigate possible extensions to some of the known mineralized areas and prepare exploration targets for RC and core drilling planned for 2012.

Since that report was published, the following work has been completed on the Kerboulé property:

• Airborne geophysical survey and interpretation. A high resolution airborne magnetic survey was completed by Xcalibur Airborne Geophysics of South Africa in February 2011.
• Trenching and structural interpretation. A total of 14 trenches (3.8 linear km) were excavated across the gold mineralization area for structural interpretation and detailed sampling. 
• Regional ‘pit’ geochemical sampling. A geochemical ‘pit’ sampling programme was undertaken to complete the coverage of soil samples initially collected by Orezone Gold Corporation, the previous project operator.
• RAB scout drilling on four anomalous targets. A total of 21,700 meters were drilled in this program and 19,198 samples were collected for assaying.

Four anomalous areas were identified for a “step out” RAB drilling program in order to investigate possible extensions to known mineralized areas. (Fig 4), which consisted of the following :

• 30m deep angled RAB holes, 20m apart, along lines 150m apart, extending for a distance of 200m. These were designed to intersect the expected mineralization trends. Samples were collected every metre down the hole and split down to 1kg samples in the field.
• The angled RAB holes were complemented by short (<10m deep), vertical RAB holes that extend the lines by 200m on either side. These holes were drilled through the cover sequences (transported and/or ferricrete) until saprolite was intersected. The bottom two metres were then sampled and split to 1kg samples in the field.
   

Fig 4. Map of Arae-Gassel license
showing the locality of ‘step out drilling’ blocks.

In addition to the work program outlined above. An aggressive follow-up exploration program is already underway for 2012 on new targets identified by the regional geochemical pit sampling program and the Kerboulé mineralized zone identified by previous Orezone and Swala work and documented in the NI 43-101 report. This includes the following:

• ground geophysical surveys
• over 6,000m of detailed auger sampling
• 20,000m of R/C drilling
• 6,000m of core drilling.

Previous Work

Initial prospecting within the Kerboulé property consisted of sampling and mapping of the artisanal digging (orpaillage) sites, remote sensing and airborne magnetic surveys, and limited geochemical soil and rock-chip sampling. During the period from November 1998 to July 1999, Orezone Resources undertook a more systematic exploration program consisting of 4,870 geochemical soil samples, 200 meters of trenching and 8,560 meters of reverse circulation (RC) and rotary air blast (RAB) drilling. The Orezone drilling program was inadequate for the purposes of resource estimation; however, it did identify significant areas of gold mineralization, particularly the Kerboulé South anomaly, where most of the drilling had been concentrated. Three wide stockwork zones (e.g. hole RCK99-58 ~2.5 g/t Au over 56 m) with some high-grade intersections (hole RCK99-86 ~ 5.2 g/t Au over 38 m) were identified. See Fig. 5.

The primary objective of this program is to define the extent of the gold mineralization identified from previous work, and document its geological controls to support the preparation of an initial mineral resource statement for the Kerboulé area.