West Africa and India-focussed gold explorer and developer Panthera Resources announced on Friday that Moydow Holdings has chosen to exercise its exclusive option to acquire the Wuo Land 2 exploration licence, a part of the Cascades Project in Burkina Faso.
The AIM-traded firm said the option, first announced on 14 March 2022, covered an area of 243 square kilometres and encompassed about 30 kilometres of identified mineralisation at Cascades, including recent discoveries like Far East, Sina Yar, and TT13-West, along with other future drilling targets.
It said the exercise adhered to the terms and conditions outlined in its announcement on 14 March 2022.
The Cascades project, previously known as Labola, is under the ownership and management of Moydow.
Panthera currently holds a 20% equity interest in Moydow, with DFR Gold holding an 80% interest and acting as the operator.
DFR had committed to invest up to $18m earn-in at Cascades, potentially increasing its ownership interest in Moydow to 80%.
Following completion of the earn-in, Panthera retained the option to boost its interest by an additional 10% for $7.2m.
Situated in the Banfora greenstone belt of the West African Birimian Supergroup in southwest Burkina Faso, the Cascades project is about 450 kilometres west-southwest of the capital, Ouagadougou, and 100 kilometres northeast of the Wahgnion gold mine, operated by Endeavour Mining.
Historical drilling at Cascades, spanning over 65,500 metres with 541 holes and conducted by previous owners High River Gold Mines (HRG), later acquired by Nord Gold, and Taurus Gold, delineated mineralisation across three main zones along a 10-kilometre strike length.
The drilling campaigns primarily comprised diamond and reverse circulation drilling, totalling 24,589 metres and 39,339 metres, respectively.
Since August 2020, Moydow had conducted extensive exploration activities at Cascades, including data acquisition and compilation, data interpretation, target generation, and a reverse circulation drilling programme involving 31 holes.
Those efforts led to the announcement of the maiden mineral resource estimate in 2021.
At 1157 GMT, shares in Panthera Resources were up 2.59% at 5.9p.
Reporting by Josh White for Sharecast.com.