Kiboko Gold Inc. announced that it has completed a thorough review of the results of its Phase 1 exploration program for its Harricana Gold Project, located 55km north of Val-d?Or, Québec. Management has concluded that the evaluation of the Fontana area has not identified a near-surface gold deposit of economic significance. Consequently, the Company has decided to discontinue mineral resource evaluation for this area and will focus future exploration efforts on other areas of the property.

To determine the full potential of the Harricana Gold Project, further exploration is required. Drawing from the Company?s evaluations and existing drilling data, the Claverny area, situated east of the Marcotte and Hooper-Bunkhouse zones in the Fontana area, currently appears to hold the high prospect for exploration success. Kiboko?s Phase 1 program was intended to 1) verify a significant portion of the 79,565 m of historical Fontana area drilling, 2) characterize gold mineralization in the wall rock surrounding the main vein systems, and 3) partially validate the Fontana area Exploration Targets.

The Company has concluded that its Phase 1 program verified the results of drilling conducted before 2011. However, this program did not reproduce the results from drilling carried out between 2011 and 2017. Compared to the earlier drilling, the data from the 2011 - 2017 period suggested more robust and extensive mineral intercepts.

The Company had initially attributed these ostensibly superior results to the use of NQ-diameter diamond drilling, which yielded larger, more representative samples than the smaller diameter drills used prior to 2011. Kiboko?s drilling utilized larger diameter drilling methods (HQ-sized core and 5.25-inch RC) that were rotary split into nominal 0.5 kg sub-samples for assaying (versus 30 g sub-samples typically used in the historical drilling), which was anticipated to produce superior results relative to the drilling prior to 2011. The end result was that the Kiboko drilling was consistent with the pre-2011 drilling in the proportion of the mineralization and the grade of the mineralization.

The Phase 1 program also aimed to characterize gold mineralization in the wall rock surrounding the mineralized structures through continuous sampling, addressing the selectivity of historical sampling protocols. Further, 1980s bulk sampling programs suggested potentially economically viable concentrations of gold around the principal veins. However, Kiboko?s drilling found that the material between structures was either unmineralized or mineralized below a grade of interest, and the mineralized structures appear to be too broadly spaced to form significant packages.

A further objective of the Phase 1 drill program aimed to validate the assumptions forming the basis of the Exploration Targets in the Fontana area. Although certain assumptions were substantiated through Kiboko?s drilling, the anticipated mineralization of the wall rock surrounding the quartz-carbonate veins, suggested by 1980s bulk sampling, was not encountered in significant quantities. The lower-than-anticipated gold content adversely affected the mineral resource evaluation.

Kiboko?s modelling revealed many mineralized structures, generally described as thin fractures in altered igneous rocks. Kiboko?s interpretation is that the observed mineralization represents an interconnected network of quartz-carbonate veins, veinlets, and shears, all anastomosed within large, sub-vertical, zones of deformation. The variability in gold grades is consistent with historical data and is typical of moderate-grade environments containing both fine and coarse grains of native gold, which was encouraging.

However, Kiboko?s drilling indicates that there is a lack of meaningful continuity of these structures along strike, which adversely affected the mineral resource evaluation. After analyzing the Phase 1 program?s evaluation results, the Company has concluded that the Fontana area is unlikely to contain a near surface mineral deposit of significant economic interest in a stand-alone scenario. Drawing from the Company?s evaluations and existing drilling data, the Claverny area, situated east of the Marcotte and Hooper-Bunkhouse zones in the Fontana area, currently appears to hold the higher prospect for exploration success.