Ann: Initial drilling results from Obi , page-2

The initial results are disappointing.

The likelihood of a large tonnage bulk mining gold resource at Ambon has been downgraded.

The host rock is shown to not carry gold mineralisation.

The 3 drill holes intersected a quartz vein, 6.9 m @ 7.19 g/t.

Multi-element core sample analysis results still being waited for.

More gold core samples shipped from Obi in late September.

The tone of the announcement is quite downbeat, and it was released at 6.55pm on a Friday evening.

Short of talking with Tom, I would say the most likely scenario at the moment is for Ashburton not to take up the option at Obi.

Hopefully, the revenue from helping the Artisanal miners will cover some of the costs.

Oh well, this happens with small cap explorers, high risk and high reward, win some and lose some.

Let's hope that Ashburton finds a new and exciting project to take on in 2012, because unless the next core samples show something radically different, I would expect ATN does not want to spend a great deal more on Obi at the moment.

Gw