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OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire) -- 02/04/13 -- Orezone Gold Corporation (TSX: ORE) is pleased to announce additional positive results from an ongoing infill and expansion drill program at its wholly owned Bombore Gold Project in Burkina Faso, West Africa. An additional 75,000 m of results have now been released since the August 2012 resource estimation. The 100,000 m drill program continues to demonstrate the potential to upgrade and expand the resources, especially the softer near surface oxide resources. The current resource is constrained within optimized open pit shells that span 11 km and includes 4.13 Moz of measured and indicated (125 Mt @ 1.03 g/t) and 1.03 Moz of inferred resources (35 Mt @ 1.00 g/t) with an average depth of drilling to only 120 meters. The oxide portion of the resource occurs in the top 50 m and includes 1.76 Moz M&I and 0.26 Moz Inferred resources. The Company has recently commissioned an interim/internal resource update using 63,500 m (771 holes) of the current program that will bring the total database to over 400,000 m (5,034 holes). The update is expected to be completed in Q1 2013 and will be the basis for the reserves of the full Feasibility Study ("FS") to be released during the second half of 2013.

"The additional drilling completed since the release of the 2012 Resource has been successful in infilling and expanding the known resources. This is expected to have a positive impact on the Bombore gold resource in terms of both size and the project economics," said Pascal Marquis, SVP Exploration for Orezone.

Results for this release include 9,509 m of reverse circulation (RC) drilling (170 holes) and 9,756 m of core (DD) drilling (73 holes) and are mostly from the northern area of the deposit. The drilling in this location was designed to upgrade the largely inferred resources and test some new oxide targets. Some of the holes were also part of a geotechnical drill program that was necessary to finalize the plant, tailings and infrastructure sites as part of the FS.

Feasibility Study Update:

Work continues on the FS with various trade-off studies to finalize the plant site location, optimal grinding circuit, water storage system, tailings design, geotechnical and environmental studies. All geotechnical drilling and work on the ground was completed prior to year end with the results and reports pending. The Q1 resource update will include pit slopes derived from the geotechnical drilling and studies. Although results from the 2012 detailed variability metallurgical tests should be released during Q1 2013, the Company continues to study both the soft and hard rock ores to further optimize the design of the grinding circuit so that the CIL plant can be built in two phases. Preliminary results to date are positive and indicate that up to 60% of the near surface saprolite oxide resources (approximately 65% of the total oxide resource) does not require grinding and could report directly to the CIL leaching circuit. This would allow for a small grinding circuit (ball mill) with lower power consumption. The Company's objective is to improve project returns by reducing both the initial capital expenditures and operating costs through the processing of only the softer surface ores for at least the first 5 to 6 years, with subsequent expansion of the grinding and leaching circuit funded from cash flows generated from the operation. Results of the ongoing trade-off studies will be released as they are completed.