Batero Gold prices special warrant financing for over $5 mln in proceeds

Batero Gold Corp. (CVE:BAT) said Thursday that it will raise just over $5 million through the issue of 7.7 million special warrants at $0.65 each.

The new funds raised will be used to advance the company's 100 percent owned Batero-Quinchia project by completing a preliminary economic assessment, including additional drilling and metallurgical work, as well as for working capital and general corporate purposes.

The special warrant financing was arranged by a syndicate of agents co-led by Raymond James and Cormark Securities.

Batero has also granted the agents an option, exercisable by giving notice up to 30 days following the closing date, to sell 2.5
million additional special warrants to cover over-allotments.

Each special warrant entitles the holder to acquire one unit consisting of one common share and one-half of one common share purchase warrant. Each warrant entitles the holder to acquire an additional common share at $0.90 in the 24-month period following the closing of the offering.

The offering is scheduled to close on or about April 26, 2012 and is subject to the receipt of all necessary approvals, including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange and other securities regulatory authorities.

In late March, Batero unveiled information on the oxide resource potential and metallurgical test work contained in its NI 43-101 compliant technical report recently filed for its Batero-Quinchia project in Colombia.

As part of Batero’s planned 2012 work program to evaluate the potential of a high grade development option at the La Cumbre porphyry deposit in the southern area of the mineral resources at the project, the company will look to improve project economics through low cost heap leach mineral processing, it said.

The company will also advance metallurgical test work and deposit modeling to increase oxide resources, gold grade and recovery.

The next stage of metallurgical testing should investigate means for improving cyanidation recovery.  The company said a test program will be undertaken to better understand the relationship between gold and sulphur grades with respect to gold recovery.

Within the technical report filed earlier in March, it showed zones of higher grade oxide resources, grading more than 1 gram per tonne (g/t) gold near surface at La Cumbre and at 11.42 g/t gold over 5.8 metres adjacent to the deposit, remain open to delineate.

Batero's $8 million, 12-month work program for the project in 2012 includes 15,000 metres of drilling, and an updated resource
estimate within a PEA for the La Cumbre area of the property.