Ongoing Exploration Increases Resources at Great Basin Gold's Burnstone Project
Tuesday January 30, 8:00 am ET
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(MARKET WIRE)--Jan 30, 2007 -- Great Basin Gold Ltd. (Toronto Future:GBG.TO - News)(AMEX:GBN - News)(JSE: GBGOLD) ("Great Basin Gold" or the "Company") announces an update on the gold resources at its Burnstone Gold Project in the Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa.
An initial program designed to upgrade and expand the mineral resources in Area 1 and Area 2 is nearing completion. Results from 8 of 15 drill holes have been incorporated into the resource model and new estimates of the mineral resources are tabulated below. The grades as well as the tonnes have increased in all categories. As a result, at the cut-off grade of 400 cmg/t gold (the equivalent of 4 g/t over 1 meter) highlighted below, 582,000 ounces of gold have been added to the total measured and indicated resources (an increase of 8%) and 219,000 ounces have been added to the inferred resources (an increase of 54%).
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Burnstone Gold Project
Mineral Resources - January 2007
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Contained
Cut-off Grade Gold
Category (cmg/t) Tonnes (g/t) (ounces)
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Measured 350 26,221,000 8.99 7,583,000
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400 21,045,000 9.69 6,555,000
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Indicated 350 9,262,000 4.53 1,348,000
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400 8,246,000 4.28 1,135,000
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Measured & Indicated 350 35,483,000 7.83 8,930,000
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400 29,291,000 8.17 7,690,000
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Inferred 350 1,442,000 12.94 600,000
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400 836,000 15.18 408,000
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It is anticipated that the remainder of the drilling program will be completed during the current quarter, and the results will be incorporated in the mining plan being prepared by Turgis Engineering.
Great Basin Gold completed a positive feasibility study on Area 1 of the Burnstone Project in May 2006. The Company is currently advancing the first of a two stage development program, designed to take the Burnstone Project to production in two years. The current program, involving construction of a decline and taking a bulk sample, will be completed in approximately 12 months' time.
President and CEO, Ferdi Dippenaar, said: "The objective of the 2006 drilling program was to expand and upgrade the mineral resources of the deposit. With an overall increase of 800,000 ounces, this objective was successfully achieved. The updated resource model has been forwarded to Turgis to update, expand and optimize the mine plan from the 2006 feasibility study. If the results from the remaining drilling are in line with expectations, a project to optimize the 2006 Feasibility Study will formally get underway. As a consequence, we believe that the production profile from Burnstone Mine could increase by between 10% to 15%."
The Burnstone goldfield is defined by an 18 kilometre long, northwesterly trending mineralized corridor developed within the Kimberley Reef, one of four main gold-bearing units in the Witwatersrand Basin. At Burnstone, the central portion of the gold corridor has been uplifted by two northwesterly trending sub-parallel faults and as a result, a significant portion of the deposit areas along the trend occur at relatively shallow depths of 250-750 meters. Drilling by Great Basin Gold has also revealed that several of the gold-bearing areas, like Areas 1 and 2 mentioned above, are continuous, but are referenced to describe different areas of focus for the ongoing drilling program.
The estimates were done by Deon van den Heever, Pr.Sci.Nat., of Geologix Mineral Resource Consultants (Pty) Ltd., an independent Qualified Person as defined by Canadian Securities Regulations in National Instrument 43-101. The primary analytical facility for the Burnstone Project from 2003-2005 was SGS Lakefield Research Africa (Pty) Limited and in 2006-2007, ALS Chemex was the primary laboratory. Both facilities are located in Johannesburg, South Africa.
For more information on Great Basin and its projects, please visit the Company's website at www.greatbasingold.com or call Investor Services at 604-684-6365 or within North America at 1-800-667-2114.
Ferdi Dippenaar, President and CEO
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