The Frias underground mine on Outcrop Silver and Gold’s (TSXV: OCG; US-OTC: OCGSF) Santa Ana land package in Colombia produced 7.8 million ounces of silver at an average recovered grade of 1,300 grams silver per tonne over 25 years ending in 1905, and CEO Joe Hebert believes it is an analogue for just one of the 13 high angle ore shoots the junior has defined on its 360 sq. km property.
The company has drilled more than 47,600 metres (284 core holes), and 198 intercepts have yielded a weighted average grade of 1,580 grams silver-equivalent per tonne over an average width of 0.8 metres, which puts Santa Ana, Hebert says, in a narrow group of peers in the top 25th percentile of silver grades globally.
“Of the thirteen primary silver companies in the world, only three — MAG Silver, SilverCrest and Alexco — have grades over 600 grams silver-equivalent per tonne,” he says. “There may be higher ones, but the holy grail for a project at our stage is SilverCrest’s Las Chispas, which has 879 grams. We’re forecasting between 550 and 750 grams for Santa Ana, and with some of our more recent high-grade drill intercepts within, we could be above 600.”
Geologists study a map of the Santa Ana package, which is located about 190 km from Bogota. Credit: Outcrop Silver and Gold
The company plans to release its first resource estimate in November and has an ‘internal guidance’ (following guidelines for disclosure from the British Columbia Securities Commission) for an inferred resource of between 45 and 55 million silver-equivalent ounces.
The four km by one km area that will contain the upcoming resource is 12 km from the Frias mine, and will include historic portals and shafts from 14 underground mines active in the Spanish colonial era. The mines, collectively known as the Royal Santa Ana Mines, reported production average grades of 4,000 grams silver per tonne over an average width of 1.4 metres.
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