West Africa-focused explorer Oriole Resources has mobilised drilling equipment to explore its 82.2%-owned Bibemi orogenic gold project, in Cameroon, where a Phase 5 diamond drilling programme is planned for the second quarter of this year.

Historically, the company reported a pit-constrained mineral resource estimate (MRE) for the Bakassi Zone 1 prospect of 5.1-million tonnes grading 2.3 g/t gold, for about 375 000 oz in the Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant inferred resources category.

Bibemi is an early-stage gold exploration project, covering the highly prospective Neoproterozoic Pan-African Greenstone Belts in north-eastern Cameroon.

“We are pleased to be progressing the exploration programmes at Bibemi, where we recently updated the maiden MRE at Bakassi Zone 1,” says Oriole CEO Tim Livesey.

He adds that it is also encouraging to see that the recent geophysical interpretation has given strong support for additional drill targets along the existing main trend at Bibemi.

To date, the MRE for Bakassi Zone 1 remains open along strike to the northeast and at depth, with subsequent interpretation of ground-based geophysics data identifying eight point targets and six elongated targets across the survey area.

The elongated targets are parallel to the known shear zones and largely represent untested zones along-strike of known mineralisation trends.

These results have been used to update Oriole Resources’ Phase 5 diamond drilling programme, which has been planned to account for 7 060 m in 62 holes, with the new locations being based on a combination of surface exploration and ground magnetics data.

A total of 4 560 m in 37 holes has been planned as infill and extensional drilling at the existing Bakassi Zone 1, focussed on upgrading and expanding the current MRE there.

A further 2 500 m in 25 holes has been planned largely to test two areas – BZ1-NE and BZ1-SW, which are proximal to two geophysics targets that are along-strike extensions to Bakassi Zone 1 and have coincident gold anomalism and quartz veining at surface.

These shallow holes are focussed on identifying additional, near-surface resources within 1 km to 2 km of the existing MRE of Bakassi Zone 1.

Livesey enthuses that an opportunity exists to develop the Bibemi project into a multi- pit gold operation.

The planned drill programme is focussed on the early expansion and extension of the existing MRE at Bakassi Zone 1, and two additional targets identified by the recent geophysics programme.

“These new geophysical targets, and the associated quartz veining, add yet more opportunity at Bibemi, which is proving to be an extremely promising gold project,” Livesey concludes.