Kibo Mining plc (“Kibo” or the “Company”) (AIM: KIBO, AltX: KBO) the mineral exploration and development company focused on gold, nickel, coal and uranium projects in Tanzania, is pleased to provide an operations update. The Company has received final results from its Stage 1 exploration programme at its Lake Victoria, Haneti amd Morogoro projects which it implemented over the period October 2011 to March 2012. The results highlights are shown below and discussed in detail later in this announcement. The results are very encouraging, and support the programme’s primary objective of identifying initial targets for near term drilling. Drilling together with extension of early stage exploration surveys over more of the Company’s large licence portfolio will be part of a Stage 2 programme to commence in Quarter 3, 2012.

Summary Highlights
  • Lake Victoria – Drill and trenching targets resolved on three Prospecting Licences;
  • Haneti – Drill targets for nickel sulphide mineralisation resolved from ground electromagnetic surveys at Mwaka and Mihanza Hills;
  • Morogoro South – Six gold-in-soil anomalies identified from regional sampling along the central 28 km strike length of the Ruvu Nappe ;
  • Morogoro North – Ten gold-in-stream anomalies identified from regional stream sediment sampling over two southern Morogoro North Prospecting Licences.

Louis Coetzee CEO of Kibo commented:

“The Board is pleased to provide this operational update and to inform shareholders that all the objectives set for Stage 1 of Kibo’s two stage exploration program have been achieved, i.e. technical, cost and time. With regard to cost and time it is worth noting that the company completed Stage 1 two months ahead of schedule and within the approved budget”

Operations Details

Introduction
Kibo’s  Lake  Victoria,  Haneti  and  Morogoro  projects  give  the  Company  access  to  an approximate  18,000 sq.km land package  of  highly prospective early  stage exploration ground for  gold  and  base  metals  within  Tanzania’s  established  and  newly  emerging  mineral exploration areas.  Stage 1 field  exploration, the results of which are being reported here, had a budget of £1.3M and was the first stage of a board approved £5.3M exploration programme to  comprehensively  evaluate  these  projects  with  the  objective  of  discovering  and  outlining gold  (Lake  Victoria  and  Morogoro)  and  base  metal  (Haneti)  resources.  The  Company implemented  the  Stage  1  programme  to  follow  up  on    priority  target  areas  which  were selected  based  on  positive  results  from  previous  regional  sampling  surveys  and  geological reconnaissance.  The  programme  comprised  three  main  elements  of  early  stage  exploration surveys as follows:

1.   In-fill  soil  surveys  over  gold  anomalous  areas  identified  from  previous  regional  soil surveys within selected prospecting licences on the Lake Victoria project;

2. Pitting and ground geophysics at Haneti to test both laterite and sulphide nickel targets identified from previous soil, trenching and geophysical surveying;

3..  First  pass  regional  stream  and  soil  sampling  surveys  over  priority  areas  identified  on Morogoro  South  (Ruvu  Nappe  geological  target)  and  Morogoro  North  (Berega  and  Gairo areas).

The  areas  identified  for  this  initial  work  represent  about  5%  of  the  total  ground  area potentially available to the Company and covers those Prospecting Licences (“PLs”)  which have been  recently issued    (“active PLs”)  from the large portfolio of Company applications, renewals and offers that are in the pipeline. As  Tanzanian  licence  regulations do not permit commencement of field work in an area until the relevant PL becomes active and there is a system delay of up to 1 year in processing and issuing PLs, the Company did not have all the licences available to it for exploration for which exploration expenditure had been allocated. This  has  resulted  in  just  £0.6M  expenditure  from  the  Stage  1  budget  of  £1.3M  during  the
exploration  period  with  the  shortfall  affecting  the  Lake  Victoria  project  in  particular.  The balance will be carried forward as part of Stage 2 exploration to be expended as PLs become active. It should be noted that many of these  PLs encompass  highly prospective areas  which remain to receive first pass exploration.

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