Tengrela South Gold Project
The flagship Tengrela South Gold Project covers 285km2 of ground in far north Côte d’Ivoire, 30km south and along strike of Perseus Mining’s (ASX: PRU) Sissingué Gold Complex which has produced more than 500,000oz gold since 2018; and 10km north of the Atex lithium discovery.
In 2024, Desert Metals drilled 14 RC holes ranging in length from 50m to 220m for a total of 1,698m to infill and extend the high-priority Podio gold target where historical drilling by Perseus Mining previously identified high-grade gold mineralisation in the central-north zone and southern ends of Podio.
The drilling program achieved several objectives, including expanding the width of mineralisation in the south, increasing the strike length in the central north of Podio and extending end-of-hole mineralisation. Results included:
- 13m at 1.85g/t gold from 78m including 1m at 13.34g/t gold from 90m; and
- 3m at 6.19g/t gold from 49m including 1m at 17.49g/t gold from 49m.
Eleven of the 14 holes drilled at Podio intersected significant gold mineralisation and the drill hole density will be assessed for a potential JORC Mineral Resource for the Podio mineralisation.
Desert Metals also completed aircore drilling at Logbog, where aircore hole TEN-AC0037 returned 12m at 0.82% Li2O from 12m and finished in pegmatite. This requires follow-up work.
In addition, Desert Metals completed soil sampling to test a historical, wide-spaced, gold-in-soil auger anomaly, which returned two distinct, parallel, north-south +100ppb gold anomalies; the 3.6km western Tiogo anomaly and the 2.1km eastern Kakologo anomaly. These +3km and +2km parallel gold corridors highlight the north-south structures that typically host gold mineralisation in this Birimian gold belt. Soil sampling returned 16 high-grade results over 1.0g/t (1,000pbb) gold with peak soil assays of 32.7g/t gold, 12.6g/t gold and 7.84g/t gold.
Desert Metals plans to complete aircore drilling at the Tiogo and Kakologo prospects.
Geology
The Tengrela South Project area is located within the northern portion of the gold-prolific Syama-Boundiali Greenstone Belt that hosts numerous multi-million-ounce gold deposits including Sissingué, Syama and Tongon. This belt exhibits numerous geological similarities to the well-explored multi-million-ounce Ashanti Gold Belt in Ghana where gold is discovered within Birimian volcanics and metasediments proximal to granite contacts.
