Alecto Minerals has entered into a joint venture agreement with Randgold Resources (Mali) to explore and develop Alecto’s 137 km2 Kossanto West gold project in western Mali. Randgold will hold a 65% interest and Alecto will retain a 35% participating interest in the project’s permits. Randgold will fund all costs up to and including completion of a prefeasibility study.
Phase 1 of the Kossanto West work program will include completion of geological and regolith mapping, soil geochemistry, follow-up pitting and trenching, and detailed ground magnetic surveys to allow a fuller understanding of how gold occurrences on the property link up and to identify further targets. If this work produces favorable results, reconnaissance drilling will follow. The companies anticipate that this work could be completed in the first 12 months of the joint venture at a cost of approximately $1 million.
A Phase 2 work program would focus on completion of work required to produce a prefeasibility study. On completion of a prefeasibility study, all costs would be split between the joint venture companies in accordance with their participating interests. A Phase 3 work program would focus on work to enable completion of a feasibility study.
High-tech Core Library Opens in South Australia
One of the world’s most advanced drill core reference libraries, holding 130 years of mining samples, has opened in South Australia.
The A$32.2 million South Australia Drill Core Reference Library in Adelaide holds 7.5 million m of drill core samples from across South Australia and has the capacity to display up to 2 km of cores for inspection on a series of automated conveyor belts in the main viewing area at any one time. It also features a 3-D viewing room, which uses virtual reality technology to give geologists a worms-eye view of geology.
South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy President Terry Burgess said the facility is one of the “unique core libraries in the world” and holds cores dating back more than 100 years. “It’s a huge storage of information that’s waiting to be tapped…analytical techniques are being developed all the time and like the 3-D work that’s been done, I think we are going to get a lot of new ideas and new technologies that weren’t available before.”
Exploration companies in South Australia are required by legislation to provide the Department of State Development representative samples of any core and cuttings taken during tenure. Core and cuttings are stored in the Drill Core Reference Library.
The library brings together samples previously stored at four separate drill core libraries spread across South Australia. They are now kept in a massive storage warehouse.
High-tech forklifts are used to retrieve requested core samples to be brought to the main viewing area for inspection.
The library is about two-thirds full with room for future samples for the next two decades.
