LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - West Africa-focussed exploration company Oriole Resources reported a first-half pre-tax loss of £0.39m on Wednesday, narrowing from £0.87m year-on-year.
The AIM-traded firm said its administrative expenses increased to £0.58m for the six months ended 30 June, from £0.52m a year ago, as it established full-time offices in Cameroon to increase its in-country presence and improve its operational efficiency.

Exploration expenditure totalled £0.66m in Cameroon, mainly related to three phases of diamond drilling at Bibemi and the completion of soil sampling programmes over the Eastern CLP licences.

The company's cash balance at period end totalled £0.43m, ahead of a subsequent top-up equity raise of £0.34m.

"The first half of 2022 has been characterised by global economic uncertainty in light of the war in Ukraine, which has resulted in a difficult time for the share price performance of junior companies across the sector," said chief executive officer Tim Livesey.

"Nevertheless, we were able to execute our first half exploration plans in Cameroon as planned and we are extremely pleased with the excellent exploration progress being made.

"The diamond drilling campaigns at Bibemi have been a great success, with the majority of holes intersecting orogenic-type gold mineralisation and providing depth continuity to the multiple targets identified within the 12 kilometre-long surface expression."

Livesey said the most recent results confirmed the importance of sub-horizontal, extensional veins in terms of their potential for "significantly increasing" the grade and width of the mineralised intervals.

"Our widest intersection to date of 14.8 metres grading 4.26 grams of gold per tonne is attributed to the interaction between these veins and the sub-vertical veins, confirming our geological model at the Bakassi zone 1 prospect.

"Work on our CLP project has progressed to soil sampling over the five eastern licences, and results from this programme have delivered a number of highly significant gold anomalies, including a 12.5 kilometre-long zone at the Mbe target, confirming the early potential in this area.

"We have also advanced the development of our exploration with mapping and ground-based geophysics, and results from these programmes have enabled us to improve our targeting and will ensure we are maximising the chance of success across all of our assets in Cameroon."

In Senegal, Tim Livesey said the company continued to be free-carried for all exploration at Senala, where Iamgold had reached the end of its first option period and had elected to continue investment into the second option period.

"This will see a further spend of $4m before 28 February 2024 for Iamgold, at its election, to reach a final equity position of 70%.

"During the period, Iamgold has continued to explore the Faré prospect, where the company has already defined a maiden JORC-calculated mineral resource estimate that is open along strike and at depth.

"The most recent auger drilling programme has targeted the possible extensions to the currently-defined system, including towards the easternmost licence boundary, and results are awaited."

At 1506 BST, shares in Oriole Resources were up 1.82% at 0.17p.

Reporting by Josh White at Sharecast.com.

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