GoldQuest adds drill rig, shares surge

Shares of GoldQuest Mining (GQC-V) jumped 24% or 16¢ to 83¢ apiece with a little over 2 million shares trading hands after the Vancouver-based junior announced that a second rig had started drilling at its Romero gold and copper discovery on its Las Tres Palmas property in the Dominican Republic.

Las Tres Palmas—also known as Escandalosa—is in San Juan province about a six hour drive from the Dominican Republic’s capital of Santo Domingo.  The Pueblo Viejo mine—one of the largest high sulphidation gold deposits in the world—owned by Barrick Gold (ABX-T, ABX-N) and Goldcorp. (G-T, GG-N) is about 105 km east of Las Tres Palmas and GoldQuest’s own Jengibre discovery is about 28 km to the southeast.

GoldQuest has only released results for one drill hole so far at Romero—discovery hole LTP90—which returned 231 metres grading 2.4 grams gold per tonne using a 0.15 gram gold per tonne bottom cut-off. The hole, which was drilled about 200 metres from an access road and 500 metres from the junior’s field headquarters in the village of Hondo Valle, was also remarkable as the mineralized intercept started from just 30 metres below surface.

In a press release announcing LTP90 in May, the company pointed out that the upper portion of the hole (from 33 metres to 103 metres) had returned a 77-metre intercept of 1.3 grams gold per tonne and 0.04% copper, and commented that it may have been depleted in copper due to the weathering process. The lower portion of the hole (from 103.7 metres to 264.0 metres) returned 160.3 metres of 2.9 grams gold and 0.62% copper, which GoldQuest reasoned “may represent primary and secondary copper mineralization which remains open at depth.” The discovery hole is the most northerly hole in the 3-km-long Las Tres Palmas mineralized corridor and is open in all directions.

Since the Romero discovery hole was drilled, GoldQuest has drilled a hole 25 metres to the east of it (LTP93) and 25 metres to the west of it (LTP92). In its press release July 12 announcing the start of its second rig, GoldQuest also noted that initial interpretation of all three holes indicates that the contact between the upper, weakly silicified, low copper zone and the lower, strongly silicified, higher copper zone is sub-horizontal, with possibly a gentle dip to the north of less than 10 degrees. The company added that ongoing drilling should help to better define the geometry of the mineralization.

The complete La Tres Palmas structural corridor, including the Romero discovery, lies in the Upper Cretaceous aged Upper Tireo Formation in the central Dominican Republic. The La Tres Palmas project includes the company’s Romero, Escandalosa Sur and Hondo Valle mineralization.

GoldQuest closed a $6.6 million bought deal financing in June.

At presstime in Toronto GoldQuest’s shares were trading at 89¢—above its 52-week range of 4¢-87¢. The company has 110.1 million shares outstanding and 126.8 million shares fully diluted.