Its rather unfortunate that the small South American nation of Guyana has only been known for one notorious thing – as the location where Jim Jones moved his Peoples Temple to in the 1970s.

However, Guyana is now gaining attention as an up-and-coming natural resources powerhouse that also happens to contain one of the most highly prospective, yet under-explored, gold regions in the world with a geography very similar to that of mineral rich West Africa. And there’s one small cap stock at the center of these potential mineral riches.

Investment Snapshot

• Guyana is an English speaking Commonwealth country (a republic with a democratically elected government) with British common law and an established Mining Act.
• Guyana’s Guiana Shield has geological continuity with gold rich West Africa; but remains under-explored – presenting strong exploration and development upside.
• Small cap Canada based Guyana Goldstrike (TSX.V: GYA; OTC: GYNAF; FSE: 1ZT) is focused on near-term production and advanced exploration opportunities in Guyana with their key asset being the Marudi Mountain Mining License covering the Marudi Gold Project. Only 5% of the total land package has been explored to date.
• Guyana Goldstrike has a strong investor base with the largest single largest shareholder (24.4%) being the Zijin Mining Group – a leading metals producer in China. Guyana Goldstrike has also raised C$3,457,000 in cash with C$3.2M coming from two Zijin Resource Funds to further fund exploration and development efforts at Marudi.

Fast Developing Guyana

Christopher Columbus was actually the first European to sight Guyana during his third voyage and eventually the British assumed control over the area in the late eighteenth century with independence coming in 1966. Thus, Guyana is an English speaking Commonwealth country (a republic with a democratically elected government) with British common law and an established Mining Act.

Agriculture and mining are currently Guyana’s most important economic activities, with sugar, bauxite, rice and gold accounting for 70–75% of export earnings. In 2015 though, the first of several significant deep water oil discoveries were found off the coast with an Exxon Mobil-led consortium announcing in 2018 the discovery of 3.7 billion barrels of light crude oil offshore. Today, Guyana is one of the fastest developing countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Guyana is Under-explored for Mineral Riches

Guyana has a long history of gold production by foreign mining companies in the country, especially Canadian ones, with notable players such as Guyana Goldfields and Sandspring Resources.

The country currently produces over 600k oz of gold per annum with all gold production occurring within the Guiana Shield – a large greenstone rock belt that underlies Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, most of Venezuela, and parts of Colombia and Brazil.

Without getting to deep into the weeds of geology, let’s just say that Greenstone belts are found throughout the world (especially in mining regions of Australia, Canada and Wyoming) with the best known one being the Barberton greenstone belt where gold was first discovered in South Africa. In other words, they tend to contain mineral riches.

The Guiana Shield has geological continuity with gold rich West Africa (think plate tectonics and how South America and West Africa once fit together as like a jigsaw puzzle to form one continent). However and in comparison to West Africa (which has a long history of gold exploration/mining and the presence of major gold miners and mines), the Guiana Shield is under-explored and presents strong exploration and development upside.

Nevertheless, there are records of near surface gold mining in the Guiana Shield dating as far back as the 16th Century along with numerous artisanal miners operating across all of the countries that host the formation using techniques ranging from the most basic gold panning to more complex ‘open pit’ and underground operations.

The Guiana Shield is also known to host over 25 known large gold deposits in Guyana and Venezuela that are believed to host at least 110 Moz gold (Note: Better explored West Africa is host to more than 275 Moz Au). These deposits include:

• The Las Cristinas-Brisas deposit, with 26.8 Moz gold in measured and indicated category and 25.4 Moz of gold in the inferred category.
• Newmont’s Merian mine, the most recent deposit in the Guiana Shield to be brought into production, with 5.3 Moz of reserves at 1.23 g/t.
• Iamgold’s Rosebel Mine, which has produced 4.7 Moz of gold and currently hosts 5.5 Moz of reserves at 1.0 g/t, 9.1 Moz of M&I resources at 0.95 g/t gold, and 2.7 Moz of inferred resources at 1.0 g/t gold.
• Guyana Gold’s Aurora Gold mine hosts 3.97 Moz of gold in the reserves category.

Keep in mind that a substantial portion of the gold deposits in the Guiana Shield were discovered in last 15 years thanks to modern exploration techniques.

Guyana Goldstrike’s Marudi Gold Project

Small cap Guyana Goldstrike (TSX.V: GYA; OTC: GYNAF; FSE: 1ZT) is a Canadian gold exploration and development company with a focus on near-term production and advanced exploration opportunities in Guyana. The Company’s key asset is the Marudi Mountain Mining License covering the Marudi Gold Project which is 13,500 acres in size and located 230 km from the town of Lethem in southern Guyana.

The property was acquired in 1998 by Vanessa Ventures from Sutton Resources/Barrick, then it was acquired by Infinito Gold Ltd and finally by Guyana Frontier Mining with the project being funded by Teck Resources. Guyana Frontier Mining was unable to maintain the mining license in good standing and the license was temporarily suspended for lack of activity and reporting.

In the fall of 2016, the suspension was lifted by the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission for the Romanex Guyana Exploration Ltd (RGEL) ownership group. The following year, Guyana Goldstrike acquired an option to purchase all of the shares of RGEL and its operations in Guyana.

Some important highlights concerning the Marudi Gold Project include:

• There is an existing mining camp on the property which is surrounded by good infrastructure that includes an all-season road network with road access.
• The 43-101 compliant resource estimate report gave an indicated 259,100 gold ounces within 4,428,000 tonnes grading 1.8 g/t and an inferred 86,200 gold ounces within 1,653,000 tonnes grading 1.6 g/t.
• Prior owners/operators have completed 42,000 meters of diamond drilling (141 holes) since 1985 and has delineated historical mineral resource estimates.

• The permitted mining license is in good standing (good for 25 years with a 7 year extension) with a 5% government royalty grandfathered from 2003 (the current government royalty is 8%).
• The Company recently sold 90.9 oz/Au to the Guyana Gold Board for a price of $1266.45/oz and for a net sale of US$106,490 after smelting costs with a 5% Royalty paid to the government of Guyana. The gold was assayed at 97% purity.
• There is also near term revenue generation potential from bulk sampling of gold in saprolite (highly weathered) host rock and royalties from artisanal miners. Under a cooperative agreement, the artisanal miners pay the Company a 10% royalty on all gold produced.
• A 100% option to purchase the project has been acquired by the Company.

The probability for future discoveries is significant given that only 5% of the total land package has been explored to date. Thus, the current exploration plan calls for 10,000 meters of diamond drilling, 12,000 meters of trenching and detailed rock, soil and core sampling together with an airborne magnetic survey of the entire property area.

Its worth mentioning that Guyana Goldstrike has an experienced management team with over 14 years of business experience in Guyana and a combined 120 years of mining and resource exploration experience. This management team includes country manager Marshall Mintz who has over 30 years of experience in mining, exploration, operations planning and operations management in Asia, Canada and South America. More importantly, he is the owner and partner of Falcon Logistics Inc, a Guyanese company which has been involved in Southern Guyana for over 18 years. Falcon enjoys an overwhelmingly positive relationship with the government of Guyana and the indigenous population of Southern Guyana based on years of working together. Mr. Mintz also knows Marudi intimately and will oversee bulk sample mining of the gold in saprolite on the property.

In addition, Guyana Goldstrike has a strong investor base with the largest single largest shareholder (24.4%) being the Zijin Mining Group – a leading metals producer in China ranked at 1,200th place in the Forbes Global 2000 for 2017, third place among the world’s public gold miners and the 82th place in the Fortune China 500. The Zijin Mining Group, which is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (code: 2899) and the Shanghai Stock Exchange (code: 601899), has developed an extensive product portfolio of gold, copper, lead, zinc, tungsten, iron ore and other base metals plus has investments in 24 provinces across China and in 9 foreign countries.

In February 2018, Guyana Goldstrike also raised C$3,457,000 in cash with C$3.2M coming from two Zijin Resource Funds. These funds will allow the Company to fund its ongoing multi-phase exploration program at Marudi – something the SmallCap Network will be keeping a close eye on over the coming months.