Introduction
Southern Gold has a large, prospective land position in the eastern provinces of the Kingdom of Cambodia. During 2007/2008 Southern Gold increased its security of tenure with four Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) tenements being converted to Exploration Licenses (EL's), bringing the total of granted licenses to seven, covering over 1600 km².
Southern Gold has continued to explore across its tenements, identifying multiple attractive gold and base metal targets on all the tenements where exploration work has been conducted, providing encouragement for further work and highlighting the potential of this under explored region.
In a country with no history of large scale commercial gold and base metal mining, Southern Gold are in a strong position holding both tenements and having expertise to further explore the region. Other Australian miners exploring in this area of Cambodia include BHP Billiton and Oz Minerals.
Of the seven tenements, the company holds three in Joint Venture with the Japanese Government Organisation, 'JOGMEC' and the remaining four are held 100% by Southern Gold.
The 2008/2009 field season will involve substantial trenching and drilling programs on further identified anomalies as well as expanding exploration into prospective, previously unexplored areas.
Cambodia Geology
Eastern Cambodia is part of a stable continental tectonic plate known as the Khontum Block. In the area of the Southern Gold exploration tenements this block is covered by a sequence of sandstones and siltstones that is probably part of the Triassic basal sequence of the Khorat Basin. This basin was a continental to shallow marine environment drawing sediment from the eroding Permo-Carboniferous Truongson fold belt to the north and the similar Loei fold belt to the west. These fold belts contain arc type volcanosedimentary sequences including andesitic volcanics and limestones. The sediments in the Khorat Basin reflect these source areas. Minor tertiary flood basalts and recent alluvium cover some of the tenement areas.
The Khorat Basin sediments are intruded by a suite of small to medium sized dioritic plugs. The plugs range in composition from pyroxene diorite to biotite-hornblende granodiorite, the range of composition suggesting a fractionating magma source. Most of the intrusives have large irregular hornfels halos indicating that the roof zones of the plugs are only partially exposed. Several hornfels areas without intrusives indicate the presence of plugs at a shallow depth below the current erosion surface. This is an ideal environment for the development of intrusion related and epithermal and skarn deposits. Calcareous host rocks on some tenements also suggest the possibility of large, high grade Carlin style carbonate replacement styles of mineralisation being discovered.
Exploration Techniques
Eastern Cambodia has unusual peneplain topography with minimal outcrop, but only thin soil cover. This makes soil sampling a highly effective exploration technique, especially combined with recent airborne magnetic s used to locate priority areas of intrusives and hornfels halos. The thin soil cover also means that trenching is a cheap and effective follow up technique on located anomalies. Airborne EM has also been proposed for all the tenement areas in 2009 as it is a rapid method of exploring for skarn, breccia and large vein targets because they are likely to contain large bodies of semi-massive sulphide that will have low resistivity.
Trenching has been proposed on current anomalism and mineralised outcrop is to be followed up by Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling in the 2008-2009 field season.
Preliminary trenching at the Kratie North tenement intercepted significant gold values with the best intercept of 32m @ 2.4g/t Au. Multiple anomalies of a similar tenor have been identified through soil surveys in the area and will be tested by further trenching and drilling.
The Kratie South tenement represents a fantastic opportunity for Southern Gold with the identification of three gold and base metal anomalies all consistent over more than 1.3km strike length. The Preak Khlong anomaly is consistent with outcropping quartz veins with observed visible gold and rock chip results of up to 28g/t Au. Two high tenor anomalies on the O'Kthung tenement represent significant Au, Ag and Pb targets with outcropping/subcropping mineralisation traced for more than 1km of veining.
Significant Au and As anomalies have been discovered on the Snoul EL. A +1.5km anomaly has recently been subjected to preliminary trenching to further define the target area for potential drilling.
back to top
|
Srae Pok