Orezone Gold drills 1.64 g/t gold over 46 metres at Bombore, Burkina Faso

Orezone Gold Corp. [TSX-ORE; OTCQX: ORZCF] provided initial drill results from its recently announced multiyear exploration campaign at its flagship Bombore gold mine, Burkina Faso, Africa. Initial targeting of this program centred on the north zone, with wide-spaced drilling successfully demonstrating the continuity of the mineralized system at depth, both in terms of grade and overall width.

Drill highlights: Hole BBD1313 intersected 1.02 g/t gold over 57.00 metres, from 100 metres below the reserve pit. Hole BBD1314 intersected 1.64 g/t gold over 46.00 metres, from 200 metres below the reserve pit, including a subinterval of 2.03 g/t gold over 22.00 metres.

Patrick Downey, president and CEO, stated: “Over the past several months, the company has completed a detailed review of the Bombore exploration model, which highlighted significant exploration upside. This analysis was aided by a more recent structural review of the project, and ongoing detailed mapping and grade control drilling within the current oxide open pits.

“These first set of reported holes from our multiyear exploration campaign clearly shows that we have a robust exploration model and highlights the significant exploration upside to Bombore’s current stated global resource of 5.13 million gold ounces. The wide-spaced nature of this initial targeting and associated results underscores the continuity of the mineralized system at depth within the north zone, with mineralization now traced to a vertical depth of 340 m or 240 metres below the life-of-mine reserve pit.

“The initial drill results have positive implications in terms of materially extending the life of mine at Bombore and achieving the company’s targeted long-term global resource base of seven to 10 million gold ounces. This outlook is underscored by the fact that hole BBD1314 was only the 15th hole, across the project’s greater-than-14-kilometre-long reserve defined strike length, to be drilled below a vertical depth of 300 metres. As such, we see outstanding exploration potential within the north zone and extending across the entire mineralized system at depth.

“Drilling continues at the next targets in the north zone and, given the success of these first two holes, we plan to add a second drill rig to the ongoing program. The primary focus of this phase I program will be on wide-spaced drilling at depth, with the goal of illustrating the broader size, scale and potential of the Bombore system. As part of this drill program, we also plan to locally follow-up on a number of higher grade intercepts, such as the recently released 113.74 g/t gold over 8.00 metres in the Siga zone which we believe with additional drilling may resolve into higher-grade plunges and potentially support an underground mining scenario longer term.

Overall, this is an exciting time for Orezone, both as we ramp-up exploration and discovery at Bomboré, and continue to advance the hard rock expansion, which is set to increase production at Bomboré by approximately 50% to a targeted 180,000oz per annum starting in 2026.”

The North zone, which is a subzone of the 14-km-long Bombore shear zone, is reserve defined across a continuous strike length of over 2.5 km and down to a shallow average depth of less than 100 metres. The reported intercepts are hosted within a broad structural corridor, with consistent gold grades over mineralized drill widths of up to 30 to 60 metres.

Mineralization within the north zone is hosted within a deformed and altered metasedimentary unit, with the reported holes ending in a postmineral intrusive. Follow-up drilling within the north zone will look to push subsequent holes farther at depth, to evaluate the potential to drill through the postmineral intrusive and back into the mineralized metasediments. This has positive implications in terms of potentially extending the limits of the delineated footwall farther to the northwest, a prospect that is supported by recently identified near-surface mineralization.

Orezone Gold is a West African gold producer engaged in mining, developing and exploring its flagship Bombore gold mine in Burkina Faso. The Bombore mine achieved commercial production on its oxide operations on Dec. 1, 2022, and is now focused on its staged hard rock expansion that is expected to materially increase annual and life-of-mine gold production from the processing of hard rock mineral reserves. Orezone is led by an experienced team focused on social responsibility and sustainability with a proven record in project construction and operations, financings, capital markets, and mergers and acquisitions.