Basawa Gold Project

The Basawa Gold Project is located in southeastern Liberia, approximately 350 kilometres from the capital city, Monrovia. The reconnaissance licence covers, with its boundary coming within several kilometres of the Atlantic Ocean. A network of roads transects a substantial proportion of the Project area, making access relatively simple.

The Project incorporates rocks of the Birimian Greenstone Belt – the highly prospective geological formation that hosts world-class gold deposits within West Africa.

Numerous gold occurrences, both hard rock and alluvial, have been documented within the licence area. Significant artisanal mining activity was evident at several of these prospects within the licence during a recent site visit. Birimian Gold is not aware of any previous modern exploration activities at any of the identified gold occurrences.

Initial field reconnaissance has been undertaken. Surface sampling and mapping programs are planned to further define prospective areas for eventual drill testing.

Gold in Liberia

Liberia is widely considered to be highly prospective for gold. The south-eastern portion of the country is underlain by an extensive sequence of Birimian Greenstone Belts – the geological sequence that hosts world-class gold deposits in West Africa. The Birimian greenstone terrane within Liberia however is relatively unexplored when compared to the rest of West Africa, so there is considerable potential to discover large gold deposits within this area.

There is a long history of alluvial gold mining within Liberia, but there has been no production from modern, large-scale mining operations.

Systematic grass roots exploration for gold within Liberia commenced only recently, and the gold industry is developing rapidly. African Aura is currently moving to develop Liberia's first modern gold mine at the New Liberty Project (1.4Mozs).

Significantly, junior exploration companies have recently made major gold discoveries in the southeast of the country adjacent to Birimian Gold's Basawa Gold Project (see Figure 2). The Dugbe Project has rapidly advanced from a grass roots discovery to a maiden resource of 812,000oz of gold. Drilling continues. Significant results have also been returned from early stage exploration work at the Bokon Jideh artisanal field, immediately north of Birimian Gold's project. The mineralisation at these localities confirms that eastern Liberia has the potential to develop into a new West African gold province.

Liberia is currently experiencing a major "rush" to resource development. In the last three years international companies have committed to invest more than $10 billion of capital in major resource projects, mainly to develop iron ore projects.

The rapid development of large scale infrastructure and resource projects will significantly increase the availability of services and enhance the skills of the local population; a situation which can only serve to further enhance Liberia's reputation as a highly attractive place to explore and develop resource projects.

Liberian Mining Code

The Liberian mining code, revised in 2000 and amended in 2004, is formulated on United States legal principles. All mineral resources are owned by the State. Exclusive licences to explore and develop mineral resources are issued by the State. There are three types of mineral licences – reconnaissance licences, exploration licences and mining licences.

A summary of these licences follows:

 

Providing all obligations are met, a licence holder has the exclusive right to convert a reconnaissance licence to an exploration licence and then to a mining licence.