Oro Mining posts solid drill results

Before joining Oro Mining (OGR-V) as chief executive and chief operating officer, John Brownlie was president of Capital Gold, where he successfully brought the El Chanate open-pit gold mine into production and helped make it one of the most cost-effective mines in Mexico.

Today Brownlie hopes to work the same magic at Oro Mining and its 2,650 sq km land package in Mexico. The junior gold exploration company has three promising properties in the country: Trinidad in southern Sinaloa, about two hours southeast of Mazatlan; El Compas in Zacatecas state, about 4 km south of Zacatecas City; and Cimarron in southern Sinaloa.

Trinidad hosts the Taunus gold deposit and is currently the focus of Oro Mining’s exploration activities. On Aug. 8 the company released additional high-grade gold intercepts from Taunus where drilling beneath the pit floor has demonstrated “mineralized connections between the near surface El Dorado zone and the deeper HS zone,” Brownlie said in a statement. “We have also stepped out on strike and have identified additional mineralization along the structural corridor.”

Highlights from sonic drilling include hole SN24 that intersected 48 metres of 2.2 grams gold per tonne and expanded the HS zone 20 metres to the east of the previous model. Hole SN27 cut 18.7 metres of 2.0 gram gold in the Eldorado zone and 40.9 metres of 1.7 grams gold in the HS zone, “both intervals are at least twice the gold grade of previous nearby reverse circulation (RC) drill hole results,” the company noted in a press release. Other notable intercepts included SN30, which returned 10.6 metres of 2.9 grams gold in the Eldorado zone.

Oro Mining has completed 3,582 metres of drilling in 38 drill holes so far. Taunus is hosted in polymitic and volcanic breccia bedrock. The gold mineralization is considered epithermal in style and associated with quartz veining and stockwork both in the breccia matrix and clasts.

The junior, created in 2005, is also looking at exploration targets in a 314-sq-km area outside the Taunus deposit. Initially the company says it will focus on the San Carlos gold property, a 77-sq-km land package it recently acquired that is situated about 2 km north of Taunus.

Results from trench sampling at San Carlos have included 60 metres of 1.68 grams gold and 16 metres of 4.43 grams gold. The company has identified an open-ended surface gold-in-soil anomaly there measuring 440 metres by 140 metres.

RC drilling at San Carlos in the mid-1990s by Eldorado Gold totaled 1,342 metres. Intercepts reported at the time included 40 metres of 1.74 grams gold per tonne, 14 metres of 1.37 grams gold; and 18 metres of 1.87 grams gold and Oro Mining is currently verifying the historic data.

At presstime Oro Mining was trading at 28¢ per share within a 52-week range of 23.5¢ and 54¢ per share. It has about 121 million shares, fully diluted.