The Staroverinskaya license area is situated in the central part of the Argun micro-continent, part of the Mongol-Okhotsk belt. The Zabaikalsky Region where Staroverinskaya is located includes such world class gold deposits as Baley, Taseevskoye, Bystrinskoye, Klyuchevskoye, all of which contain resources in excess of 3 Moz.
The Staroverinskaya license area features sediments of different ages, from Precambrian to lower Cretaceous. These sediments are characterised by different lithology. These are carbonate rocks and terrigen sediments (sandstones, siltstones and conglomerates), as well as volcanic deposits (rhyolites, tuffs, trachyandesites, and trachybasalts).
The most promising formations for localisations of gold deposits are the Cambrian and Jurassic carbonate sediments.
Intrusive rocks underlay a large part of the license area and are represented by a Late Permian monzodiorite-granite complex and mid-late Jurassic Shahtaminskiy monzodiorite-granodiorite-granite complex. They are represented by quartz-diorites, diorites, monzodiorites and appear to be prospective for the mineralization of gold bearing ore.
The major tectonic features of the area are the northwest-southeast fault zones (Bystrinskoye) and the northeast-southwest fault zones (Kutomaro-Kozlovskaya and Smirnovsko-Mikhaylovskaya). These are large (hundreds of kilometres long) structures. These first-order fault zones are accompanied by second and third order faults ........