SolGold discovers porphyry system in Ecuador

SolGold has discovered a new copper-gold-silver-molybdenum porphyry system at its wholly owned Cisne Loja project in southern Ecuador. 

The company says it found mineralized outcrops that indicate the presence of a new polymetallic porphyry system with outcropping porphyry-style copper, gold, silver and molybdenum-rich mineralized veining over an area of 2 km by 1 kilometre.

SolGold says the mineralized zones are associated with strong magnetic anomalies, and the mineralized porphyry-style veins appear to host related copper and gold values and a proportional silver-molybdenum content, indicative of an Andean porphyry copper-gold system.

Rock chip results included one sample grading 4.32% copper, 4.51 grams gold per tonne and 20.8 grams silver per tonne and a second grading 2.52% copper, 3.11 grams gold and 12.5 grams silver, with both samples returning additional molybdenum grades.

Of 72 rock chip samples, 60 returned grades in excess of 0.6% copper and 0.6 gram gold.

Soil anomalies remain open to the north and south, and the company plans to extend the soil grid sampling to identify Celen’s surface limits. The center of the Celen target is 7 km from the company’s Cuenca Loma gold-silver epithermal prospect.

“The new discovery at Cisne-Loja demonstrates the highly prospective nature of SolGold’s regional portfolio and ability of its top exploration team,” comments Matthew O’Keefe of Cantor Fitzgerald in a research note.

O’Keefe expects the discovery to be ready for drilling in 2020, and further writes that “with a first-mover advantage in Ecuador, SolGold has amassed 3,200 sq. km of concessions and is well-positioned for additional large-scale discoveries. The discoveries at Cisne-Loja discovery are an example of this.”

SolGold is focused on copper-gold exploration in Ecuador.

It has an 85% stake in the Alpala project at the Cascabel concession in northern Ecuador. Alpala contains indicated resources of 2.1 billion tonnes at 0.6% copper equivalent and an additional inferred resource of 900 million tonnes at 0.35% copper equivalent with total contained metal of 8.4 million tonnes copper and 19.4 million oz. gold in the indicated category and an additional 2.5 million tonnes copper and 3.8 million oz. gold inferred.

Drilling is ongoing at Cascabel, and the company plans to update its resource estimate and complete a pre-feasibility study before the end of the year. A preliminary economic assessment for the Alpala project released in May outlined an underground block cave operation at a pre-production capital cost in the range of US$2.4 billion to US$2.8 billion.

At press time in Toronto, SolGold was trading at 37¢ per share with a 52-week range of 28¢ to 76¢ per share. 

The junior has 1.9 billion common shares outstanding for a $708-million market capitalization.