Aurasian Minerals PLC on Tuesday said it has completed due diligence on the Gokcanica gold project in Serbia and decided to exercise the option agreement with Rockstone Group LLC under which Aurasian can earn up to an 80% interest in the Gokcanica project licences.
Under the option agreement, Aurasian will pay Rockstone EUR10,000 and within 30 days will issue Rockstone with 2 million shares. It will also pay EUR20,000 and issue 5 million shares to an unrelated third party by way of an introducers’ fee.
Upon payment of those sums, Aurasian may earn up to an 80% interest in three stages.
In order to earn a 51% interest under stage 1, Aurasian must commit a minimum expenditure of USD500,000 on an exploration programme that will include drilling of a minimum of 1,000 metres of either reverse circulation and/or diamond drilling within two years.
In order to earn a 70% interest under stage 2, Aurasian must complete a pre-feasibility study within five years.
Finally, in order to earn the full 80% interest under stage 3, Aurasian must complete a bankable feasibility study within the time frame of the exploration permits, their renewals, or conversion to a mining permit.
“Work can now commence on defining areas of interest and the commencement of geological mapping and sampling to define drill targets. Gokcanica has potential for both epithermal and porphyry style mineralisation and of particular interest are high grade arsenic rich veins which previous sampling has defined up to 67 g/t Au. In addition Aurasian plans to look at the possibility of large scale buried porphyry copper gold targets which may be drill tested,” Chief Executive Peter Mullens said in a statement.
Shares in Aurasian were trading up 10% at 0.550 pence on Tuesday morning.
