The Western Arabian-Nubian Shield: a rapidly emerging gold province

The eastern part of what has become known as the Arabian-Nubian Shield, particularly Saudi Arabia, has been extensively explored since the 1970s, with numerous discoveries of deposits of a variety of commodities including gold, silver, copper, molybdenum, zinc, tin, tungsten, tantalum and uranium. By contrast, the western Arabian-Nubian Shield, here defined as that segment west and south of the Red Sea, has received less exploration attention due to a combination of factors including that exploration and mining legislations until recently required further clarity. From a geological standpoint, the western Nubian Shield is a clear high-impact frontier gold opportunity: Historical gold occurrences and shallow prospects abound , there had been extensive mining (unrecorded but probably several Moz gold) of alluvial gold, particularly in Ethiopia, and ancient hard-rock gold mining was carried out from the Pharaonic period in Egypt commencing 3000 BC through to the Roman period and thereafter, although only about 0.5-0.6 Moz gold was produced (Klemm et al., 2001). Current mining legislations in the region have now afforded sufficient certainty to attract exploration to Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia, with accelerated discovery of significant gold resources in both orogenic gold, including the emerging giant Sukari deposit in Egypt, and volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit styles.