MM: What is the significance of today’s update with regard to Migori?

AB:This brings together some disparate information and lets shareholders know we are investigating new prospects and different types of occurrences, identified in the old literature but never followed up. It is a part of a process, in a phase that has lasted nearly a year and is coming to an end.

Let me explain what we are trying to do.

Modern exploration at Migori, in the period since 1990, has focussed on finding medium sized, open-pittable, gold resources. Logically these explorers were drawn to the line of artisanal workings running along the southern part of the license from west to east. Typically, they stood back from these workings, where free gold was being won at surface, and drilled underneath them. There was some geophysics in the 1960s, and a survey in 1977, but this was used primarily to generate possible VMS targets – looking for repetitions of the old Falconbridge base metal mine at Macalder in the west of the license, and failed in that purpose. Given that the contour maps derived were based on visual flightlines, the accuracy would not have been of the precision necessary for proper targeting of the types of deposit sought.

We knew we had to do several things when we came in some 8 months ago. Let me explain what these were:

(a) to reactivate the camp and on-ground activity;

(b) to carry out sufficient exploration including drilling to restore confidence at national and local Government levels and restore support in the local community, and ensure the licenses were secure;

(c) to trace, and make use of the knowledge of, geologists who had worked on the ground there under previous operators;

(d) to cover the ground on foot and look with fresh eyes at the entire belt;

(e) to read and understand, and relate to the ground features, the entire body of old literature;

(f) to capture, scan, digitise, and catalogue the old reports, maps, drill logs, geochemical records, and other data, and make it to the greatest degree possible accessible to a GIS platform;

(g) to extract from the literature and previous work prospective targets that had been identified and not followed up adequately or at all;

(h) to identify and test for grade and metallurgy those areas, including tailings, where immediate production to generate cash flow might be possible from surface;

(i) to explore and assess to the extent possible the potential of other mineralisation styles such as BIF, graphite-hosted, VMS and VMS-associated, and stockworks, the potential around old underground workings, and the potential of other areas of the greenstone than the line of artisanal workings in the south;

(j) the acquisition of high resolution satellite imagery, creation of mosaics, orthorectification, detailed elevation mapping, and application of refined local grid transformations to old data, with if necessary ground truthing;

(k) ground mapping of some of explored areas;

(l) independent regeneration of wireframes for all declared Resources in Micromine;

(m) modern geophysics with magnetics and radiometrics flown on 50-200m lines and at 50m altitude, and interpretation.

This work is in its last stages. We are about to fly the geophysics and regenerate the wireframes, and are waiting for some trenching results and metallurgical testwork, but most of the rest has been done, and by the end of the rainy season we should have it more or less complete. We will have a ftp site with a data room with good quality and reliable and tested data bringing together old and new knowledge and integrating and cataloguing it. If we want we can have consultants independently in all parts of the globe working independently on different areas or aspects of the data. Everything will be retrievable, consistent, and ordered. This is a huge area, with a massive number of prospects, and a broad stretch in the middle where the greenstone goes under cover and there has been no exploration. The intellectual effort in mastering the whole area structurally, and in distancing oneself sufficiently from the particular to make oneself able to conceptualise and prioritise over the whole, has to be colossal. We must make it easier to handle complexity, so that we can bring in the very ablest people and have them working on it.  It would be easy – nothing easier – to rush into drilling and to burn many millions of dollars for mediocre results, and simply run out of money. Only with crystalline clarity, extreme self-restraint, and laser-like focus will we be able to maximise our exploration dollars. That requires good people to assist, consult, advise. We are putting ourselves in a position where we can bring in people with the ability to conceptualise at the degree of abstraction required and put them immediately in control of the necessary information.

To take one example, after the new geophysics is in and analysed we expect to generate multiple new VMS targets and one specialist consultant who has reviewed the existing digitised information is highly confident that we will then find another VMS  system at the first attempt.

The new drilling season will see a focussed exploration with very specific targeting; that focus and targeting will be determined once we have brought together all the threads we have collected in the last 8 months and are still collecting. 

MM: Can you briefly tell our readers how much today's update adds to your overall understanding of the Migori prospect?

AB: It has confirmed what we thought. There are several targets with evident potential for a Resource that have not received serious exploration. At a guess, it means that next year, besides working further on at least one of the known Resource areas and on possible VMS systems, which we would do for other reasons, we will accelerate exploration in at least one new area where we think we can add a lot of Resource ounces, and drill in at least one BIF-related target.

MM: Thank you Andrew!