LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - West Africa and India-focussed gold exploration and development company Panthera Resources announced on Friday that soil sampling was now complete at the Bassala Project in Mali.
The AIM-traded firm said that given the positive results, it had now fast-tracked the next phase of exploration.

To that end, and following the "outstanding success" in defining drill targets at the Kalaka project, an induced polarisation survey had begun this week at Bassala.

The company said a total of 1,200 samples were collected during the programme, with the results confirming that two major gold anomalous trends were present.

One is a nine kilometre-long north-northeast trending zone, and the second is a cross-cutting three kilometre-long northwest trending zone, with assay results up to 4,030 parts per billion, or 4.03 grams per tonne, of gold.

The zones appeared to be continuations of regional mineralisation trends, the board reported.

It said very broad spaced rotary air blast drilling by previous explorers confirmed "significant" gold mineralisation within the zones, with results including 21 metres at 1.15 grams of gold per tonne from 15 metres, from near the intersection of the two trends.

Panthera said the first results of the induced polarisation survey were expected in April.

"The excellent soil sampling results is encouraging," said managing director Mark Bolton.

"The fact that previous very broad spaced shallow RAB drilling has confirmed significant gold mineralisation beneath the soil anomalism significantly adds to the emerging picture of a potentially substantial gold system."

Bolton said the success of the recent induced polarisation survey at the Kalaka project had resulted in the geophysical crew being relocated to Bassala, in order to firm up drill targets for testing.

"Results from the induced polarisation survey are eagerly awaited, and preliminary planning has commenced securing a suitable drill rig to test the better targets at Bassala."

At 0904 GMT, shares in Panthera Resources were up 4.78% at 12.05p.

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