JUNIOR MINING

High gold grade intercepts at Hollister for Great Basin

Great Basin Gold's effort to enlarge its Hollister mine are boosted by high grade intercepts in the newly discovered Hatter Graben vein system.

Author: Tessa Kruger
Posted: Wednesday , 03 Sep 2008

JOHANNESBURG - 

Great Basin Gold's (TSX:GBG, JSE:GBG, AMEX:GBN) hopes to extend its Hollister resource has been bolstered by additional high grade gold intercepts in the recently discovered Hatter Graben vein system. The company is "excited" about the fact that the intercepts are located in the "immediate vicinity" of existing mine infrastructure.

Chief executive officer Ferdi Dippenaar said today the main reason why these latest exploration results were believed to be particularly promising was that they were located within in a two kilometre radius from the mining shaft. This meant that capital costs would be lower if sufficient resources were found to extend the Hollister mine. Actual drill results are available on the Great Basin website: www.grtbasin.com .

Great Basin is also encouraged by the first exploration results from the South Velvet area which confirm the prospectivity of this area.

Dippenaar said Great Basin now had two new prospective mining areas adjacent to the Clementine and Guinevere vein systems where trial mining has started.

Although it was too early to say what impact the positive results in the Hatter Graben vein system and South Velvet area would have on the Hollister project, it is clear that the Hatter Graben area hosts a variety of gold veins.

Significantly, the gold discoveries in the Hatter Graben area are located 800m-1,000m underground, while the company is planning to mine only to a depth of 300m in the original Hollister block at this stage. Dippenaar confirmed that the depth of gold mineralisation at Hatter Graben boded well for exploration below the 300m level in the Hollister block.

He said gold grades on the property also tended to increase as one mined deeper underground.

Dippenaar said earlier that the discovery of the new Hatter Graben vein system had exceeded the company's expectations as it could have a significant impact on the size of the Hollister property resource.

"We have three rigs currently drilling on this discovery, focused on confirming the strike and extent of the vein system. Infill drilling is also planned to determine if this system is an extension of the Gwenivere and Clementine vein systems. With the additional drilling on the North/South structures, bounding the Gwenivere and Clementine vein systems also underway, we expect to have a holistic geological view of the Hollister Development Project area and immediate vicinity by the end of the year," he said at the time.