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ASIA

Kefi leads the way again

aving pioneered the Tulu Kapi gold application.” 6m @ 2.2 g/t, 2m @ 8.7 g/t, 6m @ 1.9
Hproject in Ethiopia to development Kefi’s licence at Hawiah, in the 120km- g/t, 3m @ 5.8 g/t, 2m @ 7.5 g/t and 8m
stage, Kefi Minerals plc is making pro- long Wadi Bidah copper-gold-zinc VMS @ 3 g/t.
gress in another frontier jurisdiction – Sau- belt, was the first granted under the new “Because of the gold grades on the
di Arabia. Saudi regime. The company had rite of surface we are hoping there’s an oxidised
The company has been in the West passage to drill the project three years gold deposit at surface and a massive
Asian country for a decade and was just ago, however, conditions in the country sulphide copper-gold-zinc potential just
starting the first ever drilling programme back then were not conducive to explora- below the surface,” Anagnostaras-Adams
at the Hawiah prospect, in the south-west tion. said.
of the Arabian Shield, at the time of print. Oil reserves have been the backbone of “The scale of it today, we don’t know
A 2,500m scout drilling programme was Saudi Arabia’s economy, with its minerals if it’s a North Sudan-style VMS and per-
in the pipeline to test the extent of the gold sector largely locked up from any mean- haps there is a possibility there to have a
mineralisation in the upper oxidised zone, ingful modern exploration despite the stream of pits. If it’s Eritrean-style like Bi-
as well as for a significant subsurface country’s undeniable prospectivity. sha, it might be quite huge and we’d be
copper-gold-zinc deposit at Hawiah, Kefi “The prospectivity is really mind-blow- required to bring in a major. It just depends
executive chairman on what we hit.
Harry Anagnost- We see all the
aras-Adams told evidence from the
Paydirt. geophysics and
At a time of from the surface
change in Saudi that we are going
Arabia, Kefi’s drill- to hit something,
ing will be targeted it just depends on
on what is believed what.”
to be the most pro- No doubt the
spective portion local conglomer-
of the gossanous ate partnering Kefi
ridgeline at Hawi- at Hawiah will be
ah and any suc- interested onlook-
cess promises to ers as to what the
deliver a boon for latter reveals from
both company and scout drilling.
country. While foreigners
“Our position is are welcome to
quite huge in coun- 100% project own-
try as it is about to ership in Saudi
bust open. We are Arabia, Kefi made
just waiting for a the conscious de-
Royal Decree now cision 10 years
to pass a whole ago to seek a local
new set of regula- partner given the
tions and legisla- Harry anagnostaras-adams failures of others
tions that will es- to properly posi-
sentially invite industry into country to ing. For anyone who goes there and sees tion themselves in country.
develop the minerals sector as the third a 6km-long gossan, with secondary cop- “We made a philosophical choice a
pillar [of the economy], as they call it,” per showings on the surface and gold in decade ago to have 40% and be the op-
Anagnostaras-Adams said. every trench…it is staggering to see that erator and end up with 40% of a giant pie
“The positioning we had taken a decade we have got this position there and it has instead of 100% of a mini pie,” Anagnost-
ago is terrific, the fact that we have started never drilled. It is something that would aras-Adams said.
drilling while the whole industry is waiting have been drilled to pieces if it had been in “The rules will make it clear that any-
for regulations is a symbol of us being in Western Australia,” Anagnostaras-Adams body can come in and own any percent-
pole position. said. age of a project they want. It remains to
“It is the first ever drilling anyone has Geophysical surveys have identified a be seen how effective that is. All I can
done there. Along strike there is a struc- strong and continuous anomaly under the say is that we have been particularly ef-
tural belt that was sampled, drilled and Hawiah ridge, with indications of massive fective with very strong local partners, but
mapped by the US Geological Survey sulphide mineralisation potentially 50- the new rules tell you that you can have
and BRGM going back decades. They 300m below the ridge. whatever percentage you want; it will take
mapped 24 VMS occurrences along that Gold grades at surface returned through time to settle down and for a pattern to
belt and basically we homed in on one and trenching conducted by Kefi back in 2015 emerge.”
pegged the rest of the belt, but that is in included anomalous gold in samples of
– Mark Andrews

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT NOVeMBeR 2019 Page 83