Vancouver — An ongoing exploration program by Andean American Mining (AAG-V) has uncovered significant gold values in the Carelo zone immediately northeast of the current mine operation on the Santa Rosa property in southern Peru.
The junior is currently mining the Open Pit zone at a rate of 1,500 tonnes per day and evaluating 20 known mineralized targets over the 134-sq.-km project.
The Carelo zone lies between the mine and the processing facilities some 600 metres from the crusher. Covering a 300-by-300-metre area, the zone forms a small hill with mineralized zones exposed on three sides. The epithermal system is defined by northwest striking sub-vertical, quartz-rich structures bounded by clay rich sulphides within limestones immediately below the contact with the overlying volcanics.
Andean American completed 42 shallow exploration pits and 148 metres of trenching over the zone. The results lead to the identification of three separate areas of mineralization; the eastern area, thecentral area, and the southern area.
In the eastern area, west northwest striking quartz veins have been traced for 30 metres. An x- shaped trench was dug at the eastern edge of this exposure yielding 0.52 grams gold and 7.8 grams silver per tonne over 10 metres and 0.97 grams gold and 6.4 grams silver over 14 metres.
Two parallel trenches in the southern area returned 8.9 grams gold and 25 grams silver over 12 metres and 7.1 grams gold and 7 grams silver over 6 metres.
Andean American is currently trenching the central area, where previous samples returned an average grade of 3.4 grams gold and 19.5 grams silver.
Situated 550 km southeast of Lima, the property rests at an elevation of 3,900 metres above sea level. The company’s heap-leach operation is running at 1,500 tonnes per day, in conjunction with a carbon column recovery process. The pilot plant became fully functional in July 2001 at a capital cost of US$1 million, including pit development.
Andean American is expanding its crushing capacity to handle up to 3,250 tonnes per day. At that capacity, the junior expects to produce 12,000 oz. gold per quarter at an average cost of US$110 per oz., net of silver credits.
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