Ariana's Red Rabbit project has legs

Ariana, a gold exploration and development company currently undertaking the Red Rabbit gold project in western Turkey, has declared itself pleased with early drilling results on the project.

Drilling in the Arzu South/Arzu North gap zone has returned a first result of 8.7 metres at 2.03 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 9.9 g/t silver. The firm is planning further exploration drilling in the wider Kiziltepe area and to complete an extensive review of licences available at upcoming licence auctions beginning in February 2012. So far, 40 licences have been identified as showing potential for gold, with 14 considered high priority for Ariana.

Dr Kerim Sener, Managing Director, said: "The scope and potential for the wider Red Rabbit Project continues to grow as we advance our exploration activities in the area. We are also evaluating a deep drilling programme at Kiziltepe to identify the potential to extend the current mine life of eight years through underground mining activities.

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"With all this in mind, the already robust economic fundamentals of the Red Rabbit Project have the potential to be further improved. In line with this, we remain focussed on providing near term revenue generation, targeting average production of 20,000oz [ounces] of gold equivalent from 2013, whilst simultaneously providing significant upside from wider exploration activities at Red Rabbit, where we are confident we have the ability to delineate in excess of one million ounces."

Shares in the Turkish gold miner moved up a quarter of a penny to 4.75p on the operations update.