Alturas heavy on exploration expertise in more stable Peru

Alturas Minerals (ALT-V) swept into Toronto on Feb. 22 looking to draw the Streets attention to Peru.

Last years electoral defeat of socialist presidential candidate Ollanta Humala to the more market friendly Alan Garcia removed a significant obstacle in raising foreign capital.

Its an advantage that Alturas is eager to take advantage of.

Things have improved with the new government, Alturas president and chief executive Miguel Cardozo says. Theyve shown they will support investment, especially in mining.

Paul Pearson, vice president of exploration, says the new government has made massive strides on constructing infrastructure a fact that not only helps the industry in terms of logistics but also in terms of community relations, as now, perhaps more than ever, citizens are seeing the benefits to having a healthy mining industry.

Alturas would appear to be in a strong position to take advantage of the more stable environment.

In the Peruvian Cardozo, the company has a man at the helm with a deep understanding of Peruvian culture, but also, importantly, Peruvian geology.

Cardozo has the distinction of heading the Newmont Mining (NMC-T, NEM-N) exploration team that discovered Yanacocha the largest gold resource in Latin America with over 60 million oz. of gold.

With Alturas hes hoping to strike gold twice, and has used his knowledge of the land to acquire an array of properties that he thinks have the best chance to be the Americas next big find.

We were ahead of all the exploration activity that intensified in the last couple of years because were a Peru-based company, Cardozo says.

The company has three key projects that it will be zeroing in on over 2007. The Huilacollo gold project, Banos del Indio, and Utupara.

At Huilacollo, Alturas has just finished drilling 3,000 metres to test geochemical and geophysical targets. The project is situated roughly 970 km southeast of Lima and is described as a high sulfidation epithermal gold system outcropping over a strike length of roughly 5 km.

Trench sampling reported 38 metres grading 6.69 grams gold per tonne and near surface intercepts of 1.24 grams per tonne over 84 metres.

Such high-sulphidation epithermal systems can be profitable, Alturas says, at grades less than 1 gram gold because they are open pittable and the dominantly oxide ore is heap leachable. Thats especially true in Peru, which enjoys some of the lowest cash cost operations in the world.

Banos del Indio is also a high sulphidation epithermal system. It is located 980 km southeast to Lima and rock chip sampling there has returned a high value of 20.97 grams gold per tonne.

Best intersect from a previous reverse-circulation drilling was 6.1 metres grading 10.7 grams gold, but no follow-up drilling has been done on the property since 1994.

Alturas will change all that this year with its plans to drill 2,000 metres in the first half of 2007.

Utupara is the final project targeted by Alturas for imminent drilling. The project lies in the same Eocene-Oligocene copper gold belt that hosts such deposits as Xstratas (XTA-L) Las Bambas and Southern Coppers (PCU-N) Los Chancas.

Alturas says three different styles of mineralization have been delineated at Utupara: porphyry copper-gold, skarn and structurally-controlled gold hosted by quartzite.

Rock chip sampling there has detected strong copper and gold anomalies over an area of 2.5 by 2.5 km. The company plans to drill 3,000 metres in the first half of 2007 provided it receives all regulatory and social permits.

With the lions share of the roughly $3.4 million in the kitty going into the ground, the company should have a firmer grip on what it has underfoot by September.

Once we have the results (from all three projects) we have to rank the projects and see which will get the most of our attention, Cardozo says.

Thats our philosophy and its proven successful in the past, Pearson adds. Choosing the best project and focusing on it.

And if one of the projects turns out to be the next Yanacocha will the team be interested in turning its exploration hats in for mining helmets?

Were exploration geologists, thats what we do. Well leave the mine development to the mining engineers, says Paul Pearson.

The companys shares have a 52-week high of 78 and a 52-week low of 44. In Toronto on Mar. 1 they were trading at 48. Alturas has 33 million shares outstanding.