MIYABI GOLD PROJECT, TANZANIA
African Eagle Resources plc announces that Randgold Resources, its
joint venture (JV) partner on the Miyabi Gold Project in Tanzania,
has given the Company notice of withdrawal from the JV.
Commenting, African Eagle's Managing Director Mr Parker said
"Randgold has indicated that this decision is part of its intention
to focus exploration efforts on West Africa. We are pleased with the
investment and progress made at Miyabi by Randgold under the JV. Now
that African Eagle has regained full control and ownership of the
project, we will now resume work building on the existing gold
resources, using the extensive results of the regional exploration,
geological drilling and structural modelling generated by Randgold's
team over the past 15 months, together with the gold mineralised
targets identified from our own exploration.
"Randgold's exploration at Miyabi was directed principally at testing
their conceptual deposit model and was not intended to increase the
existing 0.5Moz resource in the Miyabi Gold Corridor. This will now
be our focus, as African Eagle's geologists remain convinced that
there is good potential for a deposit of 1Moz or more at Miyabi.
A number of targets in the Corridor, including intercepts of 3m at
6.94 g/t gold, 3m at 6.70 g/t and 9m at 0.8 g/t from previous African
Eagle drilling outside the current resource, were not evaluated
systematically under Randgold's management.
African Eagle will consider new partners for Miyabi and will follow
up a number of approaches which it could not pursue until now".
The Miyabi project area contains a major shear zone gold system which
forms a 7km x 2km gold-bearing corridor. Although only part of the
system has been drilled to date, African Eagle has been able to
define a JORC-standard resource of 520,000oz of gold. Metallurgical
tests have shown that the gold can readily be extracted by
conventional leaching. The Company holds licences covering more than
500km² surrounding the main corridor and has defined numerous other
targets from regional exploration.
Qualified Person (AFE)
Information in this report relating to exploration results is based
on data reviewed by Mr Christopher Davies BSc, MSc, DIC, FSEG,
FAusIMM, Operations Director for African Eagle, who is a Fellow of
the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, has more than 27
years relevant experience in mineral exploration and is a Qualified
Person under AIM rules. Mr Davies consents to the inclusion of the
information in the form and context in which it appears.
Technical terms
A glossary of technical terms used by African Eagle in this
announcement and other published material may be found at
www.africaneagle.co.uk/african-eagle-projects-glossary.html
For further information:
Mark Parker
Managing Director
African Eagle
+44 20 7248 6059
+44 77 5640 6899
Nicola Marrin
Seymour Pierce Limited, London
Nominated Adviser
+ 44 20 7107 8000
Charmane Russell
Russell & Associates, Johannesburg
+ 27 11 8803924
+27 82 8928052
Ed Portman / Leesa Peters
Conduit PR, London
+44 20 7429 6607
+44 (0) 7733 363 501
About Miyabi
The Miyabi Gold Project lies in the southwest part of the Lake
Victoria Goldfield of Tanzania, about 50km west-southwest of Kahama
township in Shinyanga District. The multi-zoned gold system at
Miyabi, discovered by African Eagle's geochemical prospecting team,
forms a corridor around 7km long by 2km wide and is associated with a
major shear zone through greenstone and granitic rocks. To date,
African Eagle's drilling has delineated five principal orebodies:
Faida, Shambani Main and North, Ngaya and Kilimani.
In early 2006, the Company commissioned SRK Consulting Ltd to conduct
a formal resource estimate based on all drill results to date. The
total JORC compliant Mineral Resource was estimated to be 12.4Mt at a
grade of 1.3g/t, containing 520,000 ounces of gold, using a cut-off
grade of 0.5g/t, which is appropriate to Tanzanian deposits of the
Miyabi type. Of this, 71% is in the Indicated category.
Independent metallurgical testing of systematically selected
gold-bearing drill samples representative of all of the principal
mineralised zones at Miyabi showed that standard leaching recovers
95% of the gold from the ore.
The potential for adding to the gold resource at Miyabi is very good,
with many targets identified from geophysical and geochemical surveys
within the main mineralised corridor remaining to be drilled, and
African Eagle believes that the project could hold at least one
million ounces.
The Company's prospecting licences also cover more than 500 square
kilometres of highly prospective granite-greenstone terrain around
the main mineralised corridor and regional exploration of these areas
has identified several promising targets.
About African Eagle
African Eagle is a diversified mineral exploration and development
company operating in eastern and central Africa. The Company's
principal advanced projects are the Mkushi Copper Mines project in
Zambia, for which a Feasibility Study will be completed in Q4 2008,
and the Miyabi gold project in Tanzania, at which the Company has
defined an estimated half-million ounce gold resource. The Company
also holds a large well-balanced portfolio of promising earlier stage
gold and base metal projects, including the Ndola and Mokambo copper
projects.
Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique, the sites of African Eagle's
projects, are all countries which have highly prospective geology,
relatively low above-ground risks and track records of successful
major investments in the metals and minerals industries.
African Eagle specialises in project generation and exploration. To
take its discoveries into production, it seeks to sign up industry
partners with records of successful mine development. These joint
ventures and, in time, the revenue from advanced projects, will
finance future exploration and new discoveries.
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