Summary:
Geologically, Batie is hosted along the southwestern margin of the Birimian Boromo greenstone belt, on the Batie West Shear Zone (“BWSZ”). The BWSZ is a major crustal scale shear zone that traverses the western margin of the greenstone belt.
Batie West has three main orebodies: Konkera Main, Konkera North and Kouglaga. The Konkera deposits are a shear zone hosted style quartz-vein gold deposit. Similar deposits are found in the late Proterozoic Birimian terranes of West Africa. Gold mineralisation is typically associated with quartz veins with minor amounts of carbonate, tourmaline, sulphides and native gold.
The Konkera mineralisation has typical lode gold deposit characteristics as it is hosted within a major shear zone and contains refractory gold. It has very similar characteristics to the Mana deposit that lies within the Hounde Greenstone Belt which is west of and adjacent the Boromo Greenstone Belt. The project also contains wide zones of low grade disseminated mineralisation hosted by shears within granodiorites at Wadaradoo which is approximately 35km to the north of the Konkera resource.
The deposit style at Konkera is considered to be a shear zone hosted orogenic disseminated sulfide gold deposit. The Konkera deposit comprises five main prospects, which includes Konkera East, Konkera Main, Konkera North, The Gap and Kouglaga . Together these zones define a mineralised system over 5km in length, which form part of the Batie West Shear Zone that can be traced over a strike length of over 110km. The deposits all lie along the same continuous mineralised horizon except for Kouglaga, which is approximately 300m further to the east.
The Konkera mineralised zones are grossly stratiform with the host sequences and mineralised envelopes generally dip to the west and trend north-south apart from at the northern end of Konkera Main where the mineralisation is interpreted to cross-cut a folded host sequence. The five major prospects host mineralised corridors ranging in length from 350m to 2km and vary in thickness from several metres to 330m. They are made up of multiple stacked lenses that can be up to 30m wide but are generally less than 10m wide (most are several metres wide).
Mineralisation
Gold mineralisation is typically associated with disseminated sulfide zones with variable albite, sericite, carbonate (ankerite, siderite, dolomite) ± silica ± pyrite ± arsenopyrite alteration. Intensity of deformation is variable, but is generally strongly foliated apart from in zones of intense albite-silica alteration which can be more massive.
Higher gold grade is usually accompanied by an increase in quartz veins and sulphide content, including both pyrite and arsenopyrite. The proportion of disseminated sulphide is generally minor, with pyrite mineralisation common throughout generally up to 2%. Arsenopyrite is rarer, occurring as an accessory mineral and more irregularly distributed. Within mineralised zones, many veins and veinlets have an orientation parallel to foliation and have been filled
by microgranular assemblages of quartz and carbonate (dolomite, calcite) with or without minor amounts of sulphides (pyrite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite and pyrrhotite) sericite, albite, chlorite and tourmaline (Mason, 2010).