Oriole Resources PLC on Monday said sampling results at its 90%-owned Mbe orogenic gold project in Cameroon has revealed ‘very strong results’, and that BCM International Ltd has now confirmed it has completed its due-diligence review at the project.

Shares in Oriole rose 33% to 0.50 pence each in London on Monday morning.

The west Africa-focused gold exploration company said results have returned 155 samples grading equal to or greater than 1 gramme per tonne of gold at the Mbe project, 13 of which have graded more than 10 g/t of gold.

Additionally, Ghana-based mining and civil contractor, BCM, has confirmed to Oriole that it’s due-diligence review is now complete and consequently, the conditions of the Mbe earn-in agreementh have been satisfied.

Now that the agreement is unconditional, Oriole expects to receive $1 million in signature payments from BCM before the end of February.

Back in November, Oriole signed a heads of terms deal with BCM relating to earn-ins at its Cameroonian Bibemi and Mbe gold projects. Oriole currently holds a 93% and 90% stake in the projects, respectively.

In early January, the company inked an earn-in agreement with BCM for the Bibemi project, and last week, it announced a definitive earn-in for Mbe. The company previously identified a 12 kilometre-long gold-in-soils anomaly at Mbe, which had delivered ‘several zones of significant surface gold mineralisation’.

In exchange for a 50% interest in Mbe, it was agreed that BCM would provide a $1 million signature payment, alongside $4 million in exploration costs and future success-based payments.

$50,000 of the signature payment had been received in advance by Oriole, and the company said that the remainder and earn-in agreement terms would remain conditional on BCM completing its due-diligence review of Mbe before the end of January.

Combined with the Bibemi earn-in, it was established that Oriole would receive a total of $1.5 million in signature payments and $8 million in exploration costs and future payments for the two north-Cameroonian prospects.

Oriole Chief Executive Officer Tim Livesey said: ‘With two of our key projects now fully funded, we are able to progress exciting district-scale exploration at Mbe in parallel with the resource definition and expansion programmes at Bibemi. This promises to deliver plenty of news flow in the coming months.’

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