Japan Gold announces that it has expanded its epithermal gold exploration portfolio in Japan with the addition of two new projects in the highly prospective Southern Kyushu Epithermal Gold Province. The Tobaru, and Ohra-Takamine Projects cover alteration zones and historic gold-silver mines in a prospective and relatively underexplored part of the province.
The two projects comprising nine applications (3,028 hectares collectively), have been accepted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan. The Company now holds priority over these areas and is now authorized to commence surface exploration on these projects. With the addition of these new projects, the Company’s portfolio now comprises 69,505 hectares over 17 separate projects on the three main islands of Japan.
The Tobaru and Ohra-Takamine projects are located within the highly gold endowed Hokusatsu-Kushikino mining district, in the northern part of the Southern Kyushu Epithermal Gold Province. In excess of 10 million ounces of gold has been produced from high-grade epithermal deposits of the district, refer to Figure 1 which shows the northern portion of the district, project locations and significant mines. Notable producers within the district include: the Hishikari mine with 7.1 million ounces produced to date at average grades of 30-40 g/t1; Kushikino mine, 1.8 million ounces at 6.7 g/t; Yamagano mine, 910,000 ounces at 17.4 g/t; and the Ohkuchi mine with 714,000 ounces at 13.6 g/t2,3.
The district is underlain by Miocene-Pliocene age volcano-sedimentary rocks and Cretaceous to Paleogene sedimentary basement rocks.