Sur American hits more high gold grades at Comval

Vancouver – Random bulk sampling of a second Tarale area vein has turned up bonanza gold grades on Sur American Gold’s (SUR-V) Comval gold project in Mindanao, Philippines. The gold grades appear to increase with depth into the veins.

Random samples from a 750 kg bulk sample of the Tarale 11 vein returned 419.2 grams gold per tonne. The vein is about one metre wide at the current face which has been advanced 6 metres in from the portal. A random sample from another 750 bulk sample (at 5 metres into the portal) had previously returned 37.2 grams.

The Tarale #7 Vein had returned 148.3 grams over 0.65 metres at the tunnel entrance, and 5 metres into the fresher rock, the vein widened to over a metre. The gold grades from two bulk samples were dramatically higher with two samples about a metre apart returning 781.5 and 473 grams gold.

The assays are being double-checked at a lab in Vancouver, B.C. The gold in the veins is fairly fine-grained so the company says there doesn’t appear to be a nugget effect.

Exploration on the Comval property began in late May, 2003. Trenching, mapping, sampling and assaying has been done on more than sixty individual vein systems. At the Batoto gold porphyry deposit in the southern sector of the project area, long intervals of gold mineralization occur in quartz microveinlets between the major veins.

The Tarale vein system outcrops on the southeast flank of Batoto Hill and appears to continue towards the Maglente area, 500-700 metres to the west. A thick soil cover has made it impossible to determine the orientation of the Tarale vein system which is known to occur over a width of over 800 metres. The ground between the veins is often intensely silicified with quartz stockworks similar to Batoto.

The zone of alteration and mineralization at Batoto covers an area about 2.5 km square and extends more than 400 metres vertically. The size of the Tarale zone will be determined by drilling and underground development.

The company is bulk sampling nine individual veins out of the more than thirty high grade discoveries in the Batoto/Tarale areas. The fresh material will be used for sampling, metallurgical testing and to provide access for cross-cuts to test the grades between the veins. Initial metallurgical testing estimated gold recoveries at over 90%.