Lough Gowna Gold Project

The Lough Gowna Block gold project consists of six contiguous exploration licences (222.50 km2) which lie at the south western end of the Slieve Glah Shear Zone, along the south-western margins of the Longford-Down Inlier, approximately 20km north-east of Longford Town, Co. Longford, Ireland.

Gold bearing quartz pebble conglomerates have been identified by previous operators in the Guaige Townland. These rocks are an extensive and ubiquitious formation which occurs at the base of the Carboniferous rock series unconformably overlying the Ordovician and Silurian turbidites of the Longford-Down inlier. Gold has been panned from streams in the area and a single sample of quartz pebble conglomerate outcrop returned a value of 987 ppb gold (approximately 1 gramme/tonne). Extensive shallow arsenic soil anomalies have also been recorded in the area (Tara Mines Ltd, 1992; Tara Mines Ltd, 1994).

Joint applications completing coverage of the target area, surrounding a single exploration licence previously held by Tara Mines, were submitted to the Irish Exploration and Mining Division by Alba and Tara Mines with five Prospecting Licences 1586, 3363, 3628, 3629 and 3630 in Longford and one licence, 1675 in County Leitrim being subsequently granted on 30 June 2004. Alba are assembling a spatial electronic relational database for the project incorporating all historical exploration data relevant to the project. Alba proposes to conduct some limited stream sediment sampling and compile prospectivity maps.

The exploration effort will focus on the anomalous zones of the quartz-pebble conglomerate target-horizon which will then be subjected to detailed geochemical surveys and structural / sedimentological analysis to generate drill-targets.

Geology map of the Lough Gowna area showing mineralization at the Lower-Upper Palaeozoic contact

The information on this page has been provided to fulfil the requirements of AIM Rule 26. This page was last updated on l0th August 2007.