Gold: Mali Lithium spreads its exploration wings and flies into gold

With prices breaching +$US1500/oz ($2236) — a 30 per cent rise over the past year — explorers pursuing other commodities are starting to dip their toes into gold.

One example is Mali Lithium (ASX:MLL), which made the decision in early September to develop gold assets in parallel with its flagship Goulamina lithium project in southern Mali.

“Over the past year we have focused on advancing our highly prospective lithium assets at Goulamina,” managing director Chris Evans said.

“However, with the gold price sitting at an all-time high we are taking the opportunity to advance exploration on our tenements with known gold mineralisation, in parallel with progressing Goulamina.”

The company is now days away from starting a 12-hole drilling program to boost known mineralisation at the Koting prospect, part of the Massigui project.

This will take two weeks to complete and assay results are expected several weeks after.

Previous drilling at Koting had returned decent results including 9m at 7.53 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 5m at 4.88g/t gold and 3m at 4.67g/t gold.

Meanwhile, uranium explorer Toro Energy (ASX:TOE) has kicked off a 4000m drilling program to test three high priority gold anomalies at its Yandal gold project, just 20km east of the Echo Resources’ (ASX:EAR) multi-million ounce Bronzewing gold mine in Western Australia.

These include follow-up drilling on gold anomalies uncovered at the Christmas and Shadow Rock target areas, while the third is known as Golden Ways after nearby historical gold workings.

In more gold news today:

Dacian Gold (ASX:DCN) has a maiden resource of 481,000 tonnes at 8.1g/t gold for 125,000oz for the Phoenix Ridge deposit at its Mt Morgans gold operation near Laverton in WA.That could be room for further growth with the company flagging that the 100m gap between the surface and the resource remains untested. It will now accelerate infill drilling across the deposit with the goal of delivering an initial ore reserve in the middle of 2020.

Phoenix Ridge represents a potential source of high-grade ore for the Mt Morgans gold operation.

READ: July a strong ‘rebound month’ for Dacian, Venus drilling next door to Spectrum’s Penny West

A further 300 gold nuggets weighing a total of 64 grams have been discovered by two prospectors at Coziron Resources’ (ASX:CZR) Croydon Top Camp project in the Pilbara. These takes the total amount of gold recovered by prospectors during 2018 and 2019 to 190.7 grams and will help the company identify and prioritise targets for further work.