Kwahu Praso Gold Project - Project Info

Ghana is dominated by gold bearing Paleoproterozoic Birimian rocks, which consist of five evenly spaced volcanic belts. The concession area is part of the Ashanti extending from north-northeast to south-southwest from the Voltaian escarpment into the Axim and Sekondi areas in the south. This structural trend is best known for its extensive alluvial occurrences and gold-bearing quartz vein systems.

Stratigraphically, the area is covered by Birimian metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks, overlain by clastic Tarkwaian rocks and intruded by granitoids. Lithologically, the main rocks encountered in the Kwahu Praso areas are metavolcanic, hypabyssal, and metasedimentary rocks, Tarkwaian sandstones and phyllites, and granitic intrusions. The Birimian metasedimentary rocks are composed of black or dark argillaceous schists, phyllites and semi-arenaceous greywackes, meta greywackes, and schists. They are generally dark ash grey, medium-grained, homogeneous and compact, or massively schistose, and display thick foliation hosting quartz-carbonate veins.

The concession is considered highly prospective for three types of gold deposits:

• quartz veins and altered/oxidised shear systems, i.e., hypogene hydrothermal deposits
• gold in regolith (lateritic gold deposits, or residual gold deposits)
• alluvial gold

Placer gold:

The Kwahu Praso Project is located at the northeastern margin of the Ashanti Belt.

The deposits in the Kwahu Praso concession are comprised of placer gold mineralisation contained within fluvial conglomerates (gravels) within a fine-grained sand to clay matrix. The deposits are distributed across the floors of the present river valleys with limits defined by the steep hill slopes in the upstream parts of the drainage systems while the lateral extents of the downstream areas are often poorly defined by geographical features and instead have been established by a detailed pitting program and recovered gold results.

The gold bearing gravels directly overlie weathered and clay rich bedrock and in turn are overlain by a layer of fine grained silt and clay (overburden). The deposits lie in the Sukwa, Osuben, Kyirituo, and Asttokwasi River drainages, a series of parallel streams flowing east out of the gold belt. The deposits in these drainages vary from 75 – 100 m wide on each side of smaller drainages to more than 400 m wide in main drainage channels.

Lode gold

In general, there are two main lode gold types of mineralization on the Soon Mining concession:

Lode deposits, which occur as veins and stockworks, often sheared or laminated smoky quartz and milky white quartz, and are the normal gold-bearing material. These are normally structurally controlled and often hosted in both metasediments and metavolcanics as well as in the granitoids. The gold is usually associated with sulphides, mainly arsenopyrite.

Disseminated sulphide ore deposits, which are normally found in areas underlain by tuffaceous phyllites within the greenstone facies. These carry thin stringers of gold-bearing pyrite and arsenopyrite which could also be structurally controlled and most often occurs in association with lode gold deposits.

The Independent Geologist's Report initially conducted tests on 2 target blocks, including an area which sits on the edge of the Ashanti belt. Based on the initial testing, the Independent Geologist's Report suggests the potential for lode gold based on:

• results from samples taken from the geochemical soil
• structural features based on geophysical date
• favourable host rock
• geophysical magnetic anomaly zones
• data from geological mapping of the targeted area
• presence of old mining pits.

The location of the concession area provides access to all infrastructure necessary to develop a mining concession, including:

• public grid power throughout nearby towns and villages
  
• a major highway passes through the south edge of concession
  
• local roads are either paved roads or well-maintained packed gravel roads
• an international airport is available in Accra, approximately 200 km away from the concession
• port facilities are available at Tema (250 km by road)
• domestic water is generally available from Kwahu Praso town and other villages, supplied from borehole