LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Copper explorer and developer Kefi announced the award of five additional exploration licences through its Gold and Minerals Limited (GMCO) joint venture in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
The AIM-traded firm owns 30% of GMCO, with the other 70% held by its partner Abdul Rahman Saad Al Rashid and Sons (Artar).

It said the five additional exploration licences - Wadi Na'afa, Al Awja, Abu Salal North, Umm Al Khabath and Jabal Selm - were awarded on an initial five-year term.

The licences host sites of ancient mineral mining, within prospective mineral belts, with the Abu Salal North and Umm Al Khabath VMS prospects lying within the Wadi Bidah Mineral Belt, south of the company's Hawiyah project.

Wadi Na'afa and Al Awja, meanwhile, lie within the underexplored and only recently accessible Lorelon gold-silver-copper mineral belt, located within the southwestern portion of the Arabian Shield.

The final Jabal Selm licence was described as a quartz vein-hosted gold prospect within the Al Miyah Mineral District.

Kefi said the GMCO regional exploration team had started "comprehensive" mapping and sampling campaigns over the new licences.

The outcomes of that fieldwork would be to ground-truth historical data, assess the surface grade limits of mineralisation, and describe the structural framework controlling mineralisation.

It said the programmes would then build into "progressively advanced" exploration works, including geophysics and trenching.

"With our rapidly advancing gold projects in Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, where we are heading for steady-state production from 2025, we are delighted to have been awarded these five further exploration licences in Saudi Arabia to further broaden the Kefi-GMCO portfolio," said executive chairman Harry Anagnostaras-Adams.

"As an early-mover in Saudi Arabia with a world-class team, we are keen to build on our position in the fast-emerging Saudi minerals sector and take advantage of new opportunities as they become available.

"The award of these five additional exploration licences provides significant future potential in a country expected to have relatively short approval, financing and development schedules, given there is no need to resettle communities, less restrictive security protocols and established capital markets and domestic funding options."

Anagnostaras-Adams noted that the award of the licences brought GMCO's land holding in Saudi Arabia to more than 1,035 square kilometres, covering some of what the company believed to be "the most prospective and underexplored" ground for polymetallic VMS and orogenic gold deposits in the territory.

"We will shortly report a stand-alone overview of this world-class exploration portfolio, its status and our plans, and we look forward to reporting on our further progress in due course."

At 1511 GMT, shares in Kefi Gold and Copper were flat at 0.7p.

Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.

Email this article to a friend

or share it with one of these popular networks:

• DIGG
• FACEBOOK
• STUMBLEUPON
• MIXX
• YAHOO BUZZ
• DELICIOUS
• REDDIT
• NEWSVINE