Omai Gold Mines Corp. provided a project update on its Omai gold project in Guyana. Six holes have been completed on exploration targets to date in 2023, totalling 1,364 metres.

A work break in March was extended pending the delivery of a new diamond drill that will improve drilling capabilities and productivity. The new drill arrived in mid-April and drilling has recommenced as planned, starting with the Broccoli Hill and Boneyard targets. Drilling at Wenot with the second rig is expected to begin early next week.

This follows a detailed review of the Wenot open-pittable resource model, including creation of lens-specific grade x width models which indicate potential for continued strong drill results which could lead to an expansion of the Wenot mineral resource. Approximately 3,600 m remains to be drilled in the current planned program. One rig will be dedicated to testing open-pit extensions to the Wenot Deposit, while the smaller rig will test exploration targets outside of the known deposits.

In Q1, three diamond drill holes (ODD23-055, -056 & -057) tested a 760m strike length of the Pyramid target. The Pyramid target lies along the eastern projection of the Wenot shear corridor, between 2.5 and 3.5 km east of the Wenot gold deposit. At Pyramid, a distinctive high magnetic signature is elongated east-west along 1 km and is similar to the magnetic signature over the Wenot deposit.

The holes at Pyramid confirm the extension of the Wenot shear with widths of at least 114 m. The favourable Wenot rock units were intersected, including rhyolite and quartz feldspar porphyry dikes up to 23.2m in width with associated silicification, hematitization and an adjacent proto-mylonite. The shear continues to straddle the major contact between the metasediments and metavolcanics, consistent with Wenot geology. Although hydrothermal alteration and shearing are present, pyrite was minimal and only background gold values were returned in the assays.

The high magnetic anomaly coincident with the shear appears to be attributed to a magnetite alteration overprint, similar to that seen in the main Wenot deposit. An unexpected 25.1m wide structure with pervasive hydrothermal phyllic alteration and quartz veining with adjacent brecciation near the top of hole ODD23-056 attests to the favourable structural environment along this eastern extension of the Wenot shear. The three widely-spaced holes do not adequately test this target, that is now known to host quartz feldspar porphyry dikes up to 23.2 m wide with favourable hydrothermally altered structural zones in the vicinity and the same magnetite overprint as at Wenot.

Additional drilling may be planned after further review of these new results. With this drilling Omai has now identified the broad Wenot Shear corridor 4.8 km across the Omai property, with historical mining limited to 1.5km of this strike. Hole ODD23-054 is the first of a series of five holes planned to test the large magnetic low anomaly that covers an area of roughly 500m by 500m on the much larger underexplored Broccoli Hill.

It was drilled on the southern side of Broccoli Hill, but challenges during drilling led to termination of the hole prior to the planned depth (555.0 m) resulting in an incomplete test of this target. This hole intersected mafic volcanics and tuffaceous sediments with only minor quartz veining before intersecting the underlying diabase sill. Unfortunately, no significant gold mineralization was assayed, however the diabase sill was encountered deeper than expected, and as a result, it suggests even further potential depth extensions of the Wenot open-pit resource.

It was also noted that the large Broccoli Hill magnetic low anomaly was not adequately explained by this hole and that the additional planned holes to the north would better test the anomaly. A second hole on Broccoli Hill commenced this week. A single hole drilled southwest of the Wenot pit followed up on a nearby 2022 hole (22ODD-037) that encountered rubbly quartz veining and interesting gold grades (0.57g/t Au over 7.9m, including 1.0g/t Au over 3.0m) but with significant core loss.

This hole tested a magnetic feature parallel south of the Wenot shear. No significant veining or gold values were encountered.