Miyabi

Project Highlights

The Miyabi project area contains a major shear zone gold system which forms a 7km x 2km gold-bearing corridor. Although African Eagle has drilled only part of the system to date, it has been able to define a JORC-standard resource of 520,000oz of gold. The Company has identified several other drill-ready targets and believes that the resource can be increased substantially. Metallurgical tests have shown that the gold can readily be extracted by conventional leaching.

Licences

African Eagle has explored more than 700km² around the main gold corridor and currently has 90% or 100% holdings in the key licences, which cover 250km². (Fig. 1).

Geology

The Miyabi project area covers an inlier of greenstone which lies between the southwest end of the Siga Hills Greenstone Belt and the west end of the Nzega Greenstone Belt, in the southwestern Lake Victoria Goldfields. The lithological and structural trends suggest that the Nzega belt is a folded extension of the Siga Hills Belt and that the Miyabi Greenstone is at the apex of this fold.

The Miyabi Greenstone is composed of mafic and felsic volcanics and metasediments, containing some banded iron formation (BIF). There is little outcrop except for hills of BIF in the south of the area and kopjes of the surrounding granites.

Resource

Drilling to date has delineated a JORC compliant mineral resource of 12.4Mt at a grade of 1.3g/t, containing 520,000 ounces of gold, using a cut-off grade of 0.5g/t. Of this resource, 71% is in the Indicated category. Grade sensitivity analysis revealed that at 1g/t cut off, the resource would be 6.3Mt at 1.82g/t containing 370,000 ounces of gold. African Eagle’s geologists believe that the resource could be increased significantly by drilling at additional exploration targets.

Independent metallurgical testing of all of the principal mineralised zones at Miyabi showed that standard leaching recovers 95% of the gold from the ore.

Prospect Areas

The main gold mineralisation occurs along a northeast trending shear zone about 7km x 2km, the Miyabi Corridor, which hosts the main mineralised prospects of Kilimani, Shambani, Ngaya and Faida (Fig. 2). All four prospects returned significant drill intercepts including:

Prospect	Section (m)	Grade (g/t)
Shambani	30	31.1
	33	9.7
	21	3.3
Kilimani	21	6.9
	3	42
Faida	58	4.03
	66.5	2.44
Ngaya	18	6.4

Current Status

African Eagle's geochemical prospecting team discovered the Miyabi gold system. The Company has carried out detailed exploration of the main gold-bearing corridor, including extensive geochemical and geophysical surveys, and the RAB, Aircore, RC and diamond drilling programmes which yielded the 520,000oz resource estimate.

Regional exploration across the rest of the project area has identified several promising targets, notably the Idahina East prospect which yielded soil geochemical gold values in excess of 0.5g/t.

A diamond drilling programme conducted in 2007-08 under an option agreement by Randgold Resources, included 20 diamond drill holes (4,078m) along two fences across the entire Miyabi corridor. Although this programme was designed to provide geological and structural information, and was not expected to add to the existing 520,000oz resource, some significant assay results were reported. These included 12.2g/t over 1m within 1.6g/t over 9m in MBDH-44, 1.3g/t over 9m within 0.6g/t over 26m, and 1.3g/t over 9m in MBDH-47.

Three of the drill holes, over a prominent geophysical induced polarisation target located northwest of the Kilimani deposit, revealed gold associated with sulphides at the granite-greenstone contact zone. Such contacts are favourable sites for gold mineralisation, as at Faida, which hosts a resource of 200,000 ounces 5km to the southwest. The gold intersections helped to increase confidence in the decision to proceed to the next phase.

Structural and geological modelling of the drill data indicated at least two phases of folding in the Miyabi corridor. This implies the possibility of hidden fold closures with associated “blind” gold mineralisation at depth.

Future Programme

Arican Eagle has identified a number of drill-ready targets within the Corridor. Scout drilling at these yielded drill intercepts of 3m at 6.94 g/t gold, 3m at 6.70 g/t and 9m at 0.8 g/t. The Company’s geologists believe that there is excellent potential for a gold resource of more than 1Moz.

 

This complex structural evolution is likely to have generated hidden fold closures which may host gold mineralisation in prospective lithological units

Fig.1 Miyabi licence holding [Enlarge]

Fig.2 Miyabi prospect areas [Enlarge]

Miyabi fact sheet - November 2009
(PDF - 676KB)