Last week BlackRock paid A$5.6 million to acquire a 10.2% stake in Oklo previously held by Chalice Gold Mines.

This morning it emerged that BlackRock had moved to 14.9% of Oklo by participating in the company’s oversubscribed $8.7 million placement conducted last week.

Oklo still had more than $6 million in the bank at March 31, after raising $12 million at 12.5c late last year.

Last week’s placement was priced at 24c.

Interest in the stock has been rising since the discovery of the Seko prospect earlier this year, attracting Resolute Mining as a 5.6% shareholder.

Resolute boss John Welborn has said the company is interested in investing in juniors that have projects that could become future Resolute mines. 

Oklo’s Dandoko project is in the right neighbourhood, being about 30km from B2Gold’s 5.5 million ounce Fekola project, which is currently under construction.

Oklo has drilled more than 74,000m of augur drilling since December to test a 12km trend, including the Seko discovery.

All-in costs to drill, including fuel and assays, are only around US$41 per tonne.

The latest phase of drilling at Seko kicked off this week, with another 10,000m of aircore, reverse circulation and diamond drilling to be completed by the end of next month.

Oklo managing director Simon Taylor believes the company is onto something big with Seko with five coherent anomalies identified.

“The view is we chase a large potential oxide resource,” he told MNN.

There are a number of identified prospects at the Dandoko project, and the company has plenty of targets to test.

Seko is thought to be the potential big one, with the Disse and Diabarou prospects on either side of it viewed as potential satellite deposits.

“It’s still early days, but we’ve got the results,” Taylor said.

“We keep ticking the boxes with exploration.”

Given the scale of the drilling and a healthy cash balance, Oklo will have plenty of news flow in the next few months before the Mali wet season kicks in.

Shares in Oklo were off by half a cent to A22c.