Solomon Gold plans to start a thorough exploration of Fauro Island in the north of Solomon Islands for gold copper porphyries and large scale epithermal gold ore bodies after it was granted a three-year prospecting licence for the tenement covering a 70 square kilometres area.
Fauro Island lies immediately south of the border with Papua New Guinea and the island of Bougainville which hosts the giant Panguna copper gold porphyry project, the group said in a statement.The 100 percent owned Fauro project has been the subject of an application for a prospecting licence by Solomon Gold for several years and the grant finalises a long period of successful landowner negotiations. The licence also allows for two renewal periods of two years each.
Solomon Gold has identified existing drilling targets from previous exploration data in the Ballyorlo, Kiovakase, Hornbill, Meriguna, and Bataha prospect areas, located from south to north up the western rim of the Fauro caldera. These areas support extensive alluvial gold mining activities by local artisanal miners, which provide exploration information for Solomon Gold. The exploration area over the caldera rim is 16 kilometres long and up to 2 kilometres wide.
Solomon Gold is currently mobilizing its operational capability in Solomon Islands to Fauro. The project is situated over rocks similar in age to those at Bougainville amd Lihir Island in Papua New Guinea, projects which have yielded resource inventories of approximately 90 million ounces of gold equivalent.
The company has compiled the existing exploration data and has commenced locating the previous exploration grids in order to plan further trenching and drilling around areas of known gold mineralization. It will also collect airborne electromagnetic and magnetic data over the area, and is planning to commission these surveys within the next two months.
Solomon Gold expects to expend an amount of at least A$1 million on the project in the first twelve months of the term of the prospecting licence.
Three weeks ago, Solomon announced agreements for a placing of 21.43 million shares at A$0.14 each for A$3 million to private investors, with the money to be used for working capital purposes and to further the project areas outside of its interest in the Guadalcanal copper gold ore bodies venture with Newmont Ventures Ltd, a subsidiary of Newmont Mining Corp.