It is my pleasure to share a short interview with Mr. Javier Orduña, the Exploration Manager for Aton Resources (TSXV:AAN). We discuss one of the company’s early-stage exploration targets named Abu Gaharish. There’s a great story or two hidden in here and it is my pleasure to help bring it to light. Enjoy!
Peter Bell: Hello Javier.
Javier Orduña: Hi Peter. How are you doing?
Peter Bell: Very well, thanks. Let's see if we can have a relatively quick conversation today based on some of the photos you sent me from the field at Abu Marawat. The photos are just stunning and I can't wait to get into them with you.
Javier Orduña: Sure. I'm afraid that I don’t have any pictures of beautiful sunsets at the beach or anything, as with the project in Cuba that we discussed before. The desert at the Abu Marawat Concession is mostly gray-brown and the sky is often pale, so it can be quite drab looking. The landscape is also very rocky and quite mountainous, and does not have sweeping expanses of sand dunes, as many people might imagine a desert to have. However, I do have some pictures of some of the places we've been exploring in the last few months.
Peter Bell: OK. We are looking at the first photo here. Where is this? This is on the Concession area somewhere?
Javier Orduña: Yes, this is Abu Gaharish. It is one of the prospects we talked about before.
Peter Bell: And Abu Gaharish really jumped out at me on the map of the Concession area because it is in the middle of nowhere.
Javier Orduña: Yes, it is. It's on the edge of a granitoid intrusion and the ridge that the guys are standing on in the photo is basically the main structure. There's a quartz vein, which runs along the top.
Peter Bell: Really?
Javier Orduña: Yes, the ridge is basically localised along this resistant quartz vein and the outcrop of that vein is showing at the top of the ridge. That is the main mineralized structure at Abu Gaharish.
Peter Bell: OK. Has that ridge been thrust up in association with that intrusion, or has there been some erosion around there -- what's going on?
Javier Orduña: The ridge is localized along the outcropping quartz vein as it is more resistant to erosion than the granite that it is hosted in. So the quartz vein erodes more slowly, which results in the formation of the ridge with the quartz vein at the top. This particular spot is very close to the edge of the intrusion, which can be a good position for localizing structurally controlled gold mineralization. We've tracked mineralization for about two kilometers north-south associated with this intrusion. In fact, you can actually see an extension of the mineralisation at Abu Gaharish on the distant hillside in this picture.
Javier Orduña: The man standing in the back is named Ahmed and he is one of our national geologists. Just over his shoulder you can see a brownish, buff-colored zone tracking up the far hillside.
Peter Bell: Yes. It seems like he is actually leaning over so that you can see it better.
Javier Orduña: That's right. What you see in the distance there is a northern extension of the Abu Gaharish mineralisation. We have actually been out there sampling recently, so you can watch out for more information there. We believe that this is a fairly classic orogenic or structurally-controlled gold system.
Peter Bell: OK, add that to the list of deposit types you have at Abu Marawat. It is interesting that the vein showing in the distance is roughly parallel to the hillside.
Javier Orduña: Yes, it does appear to be tracking up the hill, but it is a different zone or structure to the main structure which Tim and Ahmed are standing on in the photo. It is also located in the volcano-sedimentary country rock package, rather than in the intrusive itself. And that is Abu Gaharish. This photo gives you a broad sense of things. I'm afraid that I don’t have any decent pictures of the mineralization yet.
Peter Bell: Well, it is a beautiful picture. Not something that most people will have ever seen before. We talk about the desert in Egypt, but it helps to see it. It occurs to me that you are limited in terms of what you can do here. There is no soil to allow for geochem sampling.
Javier Orduña: No, there is no soil development here. It is like this throughout the whole license area - it is covered with outcropping rock, but no soils. That is why we don't use soil or surface geochem as one of our primary tools, other than lithogeochemical analyses of rock samples. As you can see, there is a lot of outcropping rock in the area, and also some development of alluvial wadi sediments that you can see on the left side of the picture.
Peter Bell: What do you use to help with the interpretation of all that outcrop?
Javier Orduña: All of this is fairly fresh outcrop, which is great for doing geology because you can really see what you're looking at. The rocks are not coated in heavy desert varnish, like in Saudi Arabia. There everything is covered in a black sheen, as it is more humid than where we are in the Eastern Desert, which can make identification of the rock types more difficult. It's much drier here in Egypt and it is really ideal for geological exploration. For example, remote sensing and photo interpretation work particularly well in our region because you can clearly see some of the geology from the satellite imagery.
Peter Bell: Looking at the foreground of this picture, I see a darker area. Is that a different type of rock?
Javier Orduña: Yes, that's basically the exposed granite.
Javier Orduña: Tim Neall, one of our senior geologists, is in the foreground, and in front of him, you may be able to see some paler rocks, which are probably chunks of vein quartz. You can see the outcrop of the quartz vein just behind Tim and Ahmed, along the eastern, or the right hand side of the ridge.
Peter Bell: Really? I can see some lighter-coloured rocks there.
Javier Orduña: Yes, I believe that is the outcrop of the quartz vein.
Peter Bell: You mentioned that this resembles a structurally-controlled deposit and I wonder if you have sense for the structures yet?
Javier Orduña: This main vein dips towards the west, which is towards the left hand side of this picture, under Tim and Ahmed. It is dipping at about 45 degrees, although it fluctuates a bit.
Javier Orduña: You can't see it in this picture, but there are a series of related structures here. We think we may be looking at quite a few interconnected structures, which can be described as a ladder-type vein system, and we also see the outcrop of sigmoidal en echelon veins that have been historically worked, and look like classic C and S type structures on quite a large scale. Rather than just being a single mineralized quartz vein, we're probably looking at a series of conjugate structures. And we believe that the highest grades are possibly located on the intersections of these structures.
Peter Bell: What we are looking at in this picture is not one of those intersections, right? It is just one of particular vein.
Javier Orduña: Yes, the picture shows a bounding vein on the main structure. Particularly, where it forms at the top of the hill. It's not necessarily one of the best mineralized parts of the overall mineralized system, it is just the one outcropping quartz vein that has localized this ridge. We believe that we are looking at a structurally-controlled or shear-zone hosted orogenic system at Abu Gaharish, which comprises a whole series of different mineralized structures and veins.
Peter Bell: And coming back to the map of Abu Gaharish. There weren't any other prospects or historical workings marked on this area of the Abu Marawat concession yet. It is amazing to think that you would have such a large, unexplored area.
Javier Orduña: Well, yes there are some ancient workings in the area, that have been documented. The workings at Abu Gaharish are not continuous, but we can trace them across what you could reasonably describe as a series of structures over two kilometers from north to south. The vein showing on the far hillside in the picture is to the north, and there is further extension to the south. In fact, we also get some good mineralization to the south where the structures occur within serpentinites. There are also some more isolated workings a couple of kilometers further to the south-southwest. They may not be marked on the map, but there are certainly more workings in the general area around Abu Gaharish here.
Peter Bell: Great, thanks Javier. When you took this photo, was it your first time at this site?
Javier Orduña: Yes, I've only been there once. In my role as exploration manager, I don't get out into the field as much as some of the other guys. I certainly try to get out as often as I can, but I don't spend as much time out there looking at rocks as I would like. This particular project is towards the far end of the license, so it does take a while to get there.
Peter Bell: Great to see a photo from the one time that you were there. How long did you spend at this area when you were there?
Javier Orduña: We were probably at Abu Gaharish for about three hours that day. I went there with Tim and Ahmed, the two geos in the picture, and it was a full day's outing. That reminds me of an interesting anecdote, Peter.
The men who work as our drivers are local Bedouin. They have grown up in the general area and they understand the desert. The group we work with come from a local oasis on the main Qena-Safaga highway called Km85. They are the local guys in this part of the world.
We were driving out that day to Abu Gaharish, with our driver Abdallah, who is an elder in the local Bedouin tribe. In fact he is the longest serving staff member at Aton Resources, and is a top guy, and a mine of information. As we were driving out to Abu Gaharish, he told us that there were some old workings up a wadi to the north of the track we were on. That was news to us, so we asked him to take us there. We figured we might as well have a look on our way out.
That ended up being a three-hour diversion to this other locality, which we didn't even know about prior to that day. We found a lot of ancient workings and houses in this area, and other evidence of historical mining activity.
Peter Bell: And that photo was taken on that day?
Javier Orduña: Yes. I have some others that I can discuss with you as we release information about this particular target. It is a great example of how we can benefit from the store of knowledge that the local Bedouin have. We have quite a few working with us as drivers, field hands, security, etc, and they make an important contribution to our exploration team. They don't speak English, but they know this country like the back of their hand.
Peter Bell: Thank you, Javier, for introducing us to Abu Gaharish!
Javier Orduña: You're welcome, Peter.
Please note that I have been compensated by the company to prepare and distribute this material. This interview has been approved for release by the company.
