Gold Fields takes pass on Miyabi

In spite of some significant intersections in recent drilling, South African mining house Gold Fields (GFI-N) has turned down its option on the Miyabi project in the Lake Victoria goldfields of Tanzania.

Gold Fields had the right to earn a 51% interest in the project from U.K.-based African Eagle Resources (AFE-L) by spending 2 million on exploration. A further clause in the deal allowed the major to earn an additional 19% by providing a bankable feasibility study.

Miyabi, about 180 km southwest of Mwanza and 80 km southwest of Barrick Gold‘s (ABX-T) Bulyanhulu gold mine, sports a gold prospect discovered by African Eagle following a 1999 soil geochemical survey. Greenstones host a northeast-striking shear zone system about 7 km long. The moderately dipping zone is 20-50 metres wide, and a preliminary estimate by African Eagle put Miyabi’s inferred resource at 2.2 million tonnes grading 2.1 grams gold per tonne.

A 6,461-metre, 53-hole program of reverse-circulation drilling, which ended in early December 2003, confirmed extensions to known mineralization at four places on the shear system. At Kilimani, near the midpoint of the soil anomaly that first indicated the Miyabi mineralization, samples showed average grades of 1.1-2.7 grams gold per tonne over intercept lengths of 12-18 metres; narrower zones, 3 to 6 metres long, carried gold grades as high as 24 grams per tonne.

At Shambani, about 3 km southwest of Kilimani, gold grades in the 3-gram range were encountered over intersections 3-6 metres long, and an 18-metre intersection in one hole included one 3-metre interval grading 15.9 grams per tonne.

Each of two drill holes at Ngaya, another 1.5 km to the southwest, returned multiple intersections. One hole cut a 6-metre length grading 10.2 grams gold per tonne and farther down intersected 15 metres averaging 1.6 grams; a second hole enocuntered 3 metres of 6-gram-per-tonne material and 12 metres that averaged 2.4 grams per tonne.

At the Faida zone, at the southwestern end of the shear system, two holes each intersected a 39-metre mineralized zone, with the first hole averaging 1.5 grams per tonne and the second, 1.3 grams gold.