Ed Flood hunting porphyry in Argentina

Being part of the team that unearthed one of the world’s great copper-gold deposits in Oyu Tolgoi hasn’t left Ed Flood to rest on his laurels. 

The founding president and former deputy chair of Ivanhoe Mines (IVN-T, IVN-N) is now throwing his energy into developing silver mines in Argentina through Concordia Resource (CCN-V). 

With Flood and his 35 years of mining experience at the helm as president and chief executive, Concordia has been busy with two key deals in Argentina. 

The first was acquiring an option to take a 100% stake in the La Providencia silver mine, which hosted historic production between 250,000 tonnes and 400,000 tonnes of ore, at an average head grade of 250 grams silver per tonne. 

Concordia got the drills turning at the project in September, and Flood says the company is looking to get a compliant resource estimate out shortly by duplicating results from historic production and historic estimates. 

The historic work has led him to believe that there is potential to outline 20 million oz. silver by the end of this year. 

La Providencia sits in highlands of the Puna region of northwestern Argentina. The property covers 30 sq. km at a 4,200-metre elevation, but it is accessible by road and 260 km from San Salvador de Jujuy, the capital of Jujuy province. 

As with most past-producing mines, infrastructure at the site is good with access to gas pipelines, power lines, a railroad and nearby highway access to Chile. 

The La Providencia deposit was discovered in 1969 and turned out over 5 million oz. silver between 1986 and 1997 from ore grading between 400 grams per tonne and 500 grams per tonne silver.

Concordia says the deposit is hosted by poorly consolidated Plio-Pleistocene continental sediments consisting of sandstones and conglomerates preserved in an 18-km pull-apart basin within a basement of Ordovician clastic sediments. The basin, it says, hosts a number of occurrences of what have previously been interpreted as redbed-type copper and silver mineralization.

But it’s at the second project in the company’s pipeline where things could get very interesting. 

Being part of the huge Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold porphyry project has evidently left a taste for the giant mineralization style in Flood’s mouth, and he is hoping to strike pay dirt again at the Cerro Amarillo project.

The property hosts a copper-gold porphyry at the southern end of the famed El Teniente belt – which hosts some of the world greatest coppery-porphyry projects, such as Anglo American‘s (AAL-L, AAUKY-Q) Los Bronces copper-molybdenum mine and Codelco‘s El Teniente underground copper mine. 

Those two mines, however, benefit from falling on the Chilean side of the border. 

Concordia’s property lies on the Argentinean side in Mendoza province, where cyanide use and heap leaching is prohibited. 

Combined with the remoteness of the project, this has left Cerro Amarillo undrilled despite the prospectiveness of the ground.

In its early stage, the company is describing Cerro Amarillo as a gold-rich porphyry property containing two partially explored mineralized porphyry systems and four unexplored colour anomalies. 

The two porphyry occurrences are known as Cerro Amarillo and Cajon Grande. 

Concordia says that the data collected to date indicate gold-rich copper, molybdenum and gold porphyry systems.

As summer approaches in the southern hemisphere, the company will be mounting an exploration campaign that is expected to lead to first-stage drill testing of Cerro Amarillo.

Concordia has 52 months to decide if it wants to exercise its option to acquire a 100% interest in the properties.

The company remains well funded, with over $30 million in cash and 60 million shares outstanding. On Oct. 17 its shares traded for 54¢ on a 55,000-share volume.