Oyem Permit, Gabon, Central Africa
Permit and Location
The Oyem permit in northern Gabon is 516 km2 in size and can be reached from the local capital Mitzic via tarred and gravel roads (Figure 1). The permit was granted to GoldStone’s 100% owned Gabonese subsidiary GoldStone Resources Limited Gabon S.A.R.L. in April 2011 for a period of three years and can be renewed twice for a period of three years.
Prospectivity
The Oyem permit contains a 15 km long, robust and east-west trending gold in soil anomaly (Figure 2). This anomaly was detected together with several other anomalies during the period from 2005 to 2009 when 14 million euros of European Union funding was applied by the French, South African and Gabonese Geological Surveys to outline the mineral prospectivity of Gabon. The Oyem permit was “cherry picked” for application when GoldStone’s geologists reviewed the quality of the soil anomalies resulting from the country-wide survey. The Oyem soil anomaly coincides with a splay (Figure 3) off a well-known regional geological structure and covers gold-prospective Archean banded iron formation and amphibolites. The gold mineralised zone also occurs within a halo of anomalous strontium, barium, molybdenum and copper, probably pointing towards a ductile-brittle shear-zone hosted hydrothermal gold deposit. The clear spatial association of a 15 km long, robust gold in soil anomaly with an underlying shear-zone in an Archean terrain generally prospective for gold makes this permit a top priority for GoldStone’s exploration programme. It is further very encouraging that the streams which drain the eastern portion of the gold anomaly are presently targeted by artisanal gold miners.
GoldStone’s Exploration
A reconnaissance visit to the permit area by our geologists during May 2011 indicated that the soils in the area are too deep to use trenching as an exploration tool. Geological follow-up work during the remainder of 2011 will include shallow drilling and in-fill soil sampling over the central part of the anomaly.
Figure 1: A map of Gabon showing the location of the Oyem permit in the northern part of the country. The permit area can be reached from Mitzic via tarred and gravel roads and covers a regional gold-prospective structure. Several gold occurrences substantiate the prospectivity of the Archean rocks in the area of interest.
Figure 2: A 15 km long, robust gold in soil anomaly completely covered by the Oyem permit area. The streams that drain the eastern part of the anomaly are presently targeted by artisanal gold miners.
Figure 3: The outline of the Oyem gold in soil anomaly superimposed over the results of an airborne magnetic survey. It can be seen that the soil anomaly coincides with an east-west trending linear magnetic trend (in blue). This trend is interpreted to be the shear zone which controlled the gold mineralisation in the permit area.