Special Report: With the appointment of an experienced chairman and cash in the bank, Chesser Resources will crank up the tempo at its flagship Diamba Sud gold project in Senegal.
Chesser Resources (ASX:CHZ) recently appointed former Papillon Resources managing director Mark Connelly as chairman and secured $6m in a very strongly supported share placement to accelerate drilling.
Connelly is a dealmaker, involved in the $US570m merger of Papillon with B2 Gold in 2014 and was the managing director of Adamus Resources until its $US600m merger with Endeavour Mining.
More recently, he was the chairman of market darling and new gold producer West African Resources (ASX:WAF) and is the chairman of Oklo Resources (ASX:OKU).
Chesser managing director Mike Brown told Stockhead that Connelly’s credentials and experience adds a lot of credibility to the company.
“Chesser had a very quick discovery within two years of taking on a greenfields project and while it is still early days, it’s a good time to leverage Mark’s experience to ensure that we structure things in a way that would favour development,” he says.
“With his track record, he wouldn’t take any type of position — he believes firmly in the Diamba Sud project and its potential.”
Elephant hunting in Senegal
Chesser is currently waiting on the remaining results of its 4,000m Phase 4 reverse circulation drilling program at the ‘Area A’ trend within Diamba Sud in the prolific Senegal-Mali Shear Zone.
The initial batch of results from the first 12 holes had the company celebrating after intersecting top results of 6m at 5.6 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 110m and 6m at 5.44g/t gold from 96m in the same hole at the Eastern structure and 15m at 3.39g/t gold from 117m and ending in mineralisation at the Western structure.
Hits above 5g/t gold are generally considered to be high-grade.
More importantly for Brown was the discovery of a second structural trend, which he describes as being critical for the development of the project.
“The intersection of structures create very favourable zones for mineralisation,” he explained.
“Having a new trend opens up a whole lot of exploration targets along the structures’ strike and in particular at these intersections.”
He added that the company still had at least two batches of results to come through that will be announced once they were available.
This would be followed by the region’s wet season from mid-July to September, which would prevent any field work from being carried out.
During this time, Chesser intends to process the results and integrate them into its geological model before planning its large-scale drilling plans that could kick-off in October.
“We would be looking at carrying out about 15,000m of infill and extensional drilling at Area A, which is close to Barrick’s Bambadji joint venture immediately to the east,” Brown said.
“Barrick are very active and have disclosed that the anomaly stretches across to their property as well.
“We have got a very big anomalous area and we have hardly scratched the surface on the strike extension of that area.”
The big drill program could be followed up by a potential 5,000m drill program in May-June before next year’s wet season.
Looking further afield
Chesser is looking at doing reconnaissance work on its Diamba Nord project, which is north of Teranga Gold’s 5 million ounce Sabodala open pit operation, to determine what it has there.
It also has a couple of applications for other properties in Senegal.
“Where we are jurisdictional risk is really not an issue for us,” Brown said.
“In that kind of framework, we hope we can continue to get some really good results, advance the project and build shareholder value along the way.”