The Omai Gold Mine is located in Guyana on the north coast of South America near the west bank of the Essequibo River in the interior of the country.

of gold was extracted from the placer deposits of Gilt, Dunclain and L'Esperence creeks by small-scale miners (also known as pork-knockers) using primitive hand methods.

The German Syndicate leased the concession in 1896 and carried out extensive investigation of bedrock quartz lodes by primitive drilling and tunneling and produced 1860 kg (59,800 oz) of gold.

Iп order to define reserves, close spaced diamond drilling focused on the primary mineralization in the Omai Stock.

However, due to a combination of low gold prices and a favorable соррег market at the advent of the Korean War, the company decided to relinquish the property in 1951.

In May 1985, Golden Star Resources Ltd. (GSR), a junior mineral exploration company listed on the Alberta stock exchange, signed an Exclusive Exploration Permit (EEP) with the Guyana government over the Omai area, and retained Canadian engineering consultancy SNC Inc. to undertake an evaluation-feasibility study of the oxidized zone.

On the basis of these encouraging surface results, GSR bored six deep diamond drill-holes, totalling 2125 m, to test mineralization in the Omai Intrusive Stock (later to become the Fennell pit).

In March 1987, GSR optioned the property to Placer Dome Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, which became the senior joint-venture partner at Omai.

Over a three-year period Placer conducted a comprehensive integrated exploration program of surface mapping, trenching, soil geochemistry and ground geophysics, and approximately 24,000 m of diamond drilling.

In February 1989, overlapping geochemical and radiometric anomalies drew attention to the Wenot Lake area some 800 m to the south of the Omai Stock.

[2] The Wenot[3] zone occurs along an approximately east-west regional shear dividing tuffaceous meta-sediments in the south from andesitic and basaltic meta-volcanics in the north.