Desert Gold Ventures Inc. announced the initiation of a Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") to determine the viability of mining oxide and transition mineral resources at its Barani East and Gourbassi West gold deposits and an exploration drill program to further test/expand the 421,800 oz Inferred mineral resource Mogoyafara Deposit and select high priority targets. All these target areas lie on Desert Gold's SMSZ Property in western Mali. Exploration drilling is proposed over the Mogoyafara South Deposit, which comprises a 421,800 oz Inferred mineral resource grading 1.05 g/t Au.

This deposit occurs within a multi-km scale sigmoidal-shaped magnetic feature and is open in all directions with recent auger drilling highlighting potential proximal new zones. The current drill proposal includes 32 RC holes totaling 3,795 metres and 2 diamond drill holes totaling 500 metres with the goal to validate historic drill holes, the geological model and expand the footprint of the known, gold-bearing lenses. Drilling is also proposed over the Frikidi area, which returned five grab samples assaying >100 g/t Au, the highest-grade auger sample to date at 8,650 ppb gold and the site of a km-scale, cross cutting, alteration zone associated with a northwest-trending splay off of the Senegal Mali Shear Zone.

Approximately 1,150 metres in 21 holes are proposed over this target area, A third target area, located just south of the Barani East deposit, has been identified through mapping and recent auger drilling. Numerous gold-in-auger targets to 1,527 ppb gold, proximal to a km-long tourmaline alteration zone, need to be followed up. In total, 24 holes totaling 1,200 metres are recommended.

The fourth target area lies immediately to the NE of the Barani East Deposit, along the strike extent of the structure that hosts the Barani East Deposit. This area has been an active artisanal mining site with 4, approximately 100 m long open pits previously excavated. The Company's work in the area has returned up to 2.04 g/t Au over 30 metres.

Follow-up of this intercept and numerous other drill targets are recommended. A total of 41 holes comprising 2,050 metres are proposed. As part of the Company's ongoing review of the property, a `multispectral satellite and synthetic aperture radar analysis of its 440 km2 SMSZ Project in Western Mali was carried out.

The goal of the project was to identify larger scale alteration and/or structural features that would aid in the follow-up prioritization of an expanding list of gold zones that have been identified on the property. This type of review has been successfully carried out over projects in other areas of the world. This work identified additional exploration targets and potential extensions to known target area and with targets still requiring validation by drill testing.

More analysis of the data is also required to produce a testable vetted `exploration model'.