We have been monitoring Goldstone Resources Ltd (LON:GRL) very closely in recent weeks. After emerging from a difficult few years the company has recently morphed into a pure gold exploration company with some territory in the most highly prospective areas of the world. By highly prospective, we are talking about Goldstone's two projects in Ghana and a project in Senegal. In all three cases the projects are in known gold exploration and mining zones and, notably, all three are located close to a number of multi-million ounce gold projects. More importantly, in the case of the Homase licence in Ghana, the company also has a project previously drilled extensively a few years ago, the data for which the company was able to acquire with the project. This has enabled Goldstone to develop a JORC compliant resource which it announced to the market yesterday (click here to view). We contacted the Exploration Director, Dr Hendrik Schloemann with a few questions and give him the opportunity to expand on todays news for the benefit of investors.
Here's what he had to say:
MM: Can you expand a little on the significance of today's JORC announcement?
HS:We have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that 81% of the resource is in the indicated and measured categories. The higher valuation and measure of confidence ascribed to such a resource as opposed to a majority inferred resource is not something we expected at this early stage. What's interesting is that it appears that the market does not understand the different values ascribed to the categories and the measure of confidence one can assume for a measured resource as opposed to an inferred resource.
MM: What do these results contribute to your understanding of the resource?
HS:The fact that 81% of the resource was classified in the indicated and measured categories and that the ore is within 200 meters of the surface indicates that an enlarged resource can potentially be exploited by open pit mining methods. Before we however start to think of scoping studies we would have to upgrade the resource to at least 600,000 ounces or more. Given the obvious exploration targets below the present resource and along strike, this is a realistic aim. Under the pit high grade…
