Goldquest sinks 37% on drill results

Shares of Goldquest Mining (GQC-V) have dropped every time the company has published new holes from its ongoing drill program at the Romero gold-copper target. 

This time was no different. The stock plunged 37% after the Vancouver-based explorer released the latest five holes from the Romero target on its Las Tres Palmas trend in the Dominican Republic.

The best hole of the batch, 111, returned 52 metres of 1.31 grams gold per tonne and 1.24% copper, within a larger intercept of 80 metres grading 0.93 gram gold and 0.85% copper.

Hole 111 is Romero’s furthest hole drilled to the east, stepping out 100 metres from previous drilling.

“The Romero mineralized zone now extends over 400 metres from the northwest to the southeast, representing less than 25% of the induced-polarization (IP) anomaly between Romero and Escandalosa, and remains open in both directions,” company CEO Julio Espaillat states.

To get a better picture of the two targets’ potential, the junior has retained Ontario-based Insight Geophysics to initiate a second phase of IP surveys at the Las Tres Palmas trend.

The surveys should penetrate a 500-metre depth and provide better-quality data for anomalies near Romero. The surveys are slated to start in December and carry on through mid-2013.

Goldquest has reported 23 holes at Romero, which was discovered in May.

Of the results released so far, 106 was the first deep hole, with a final length of 705 metres. It returned 166 metres grading 0.67 gram gold and 0.16% copper, and ended about 230 metres below the bottom of hole 93, which the company reported in late July. It was perhaps the last drill result that had a positive effect on the company’s share price.

While mineralization at depth was not significant, Goldquest says that hole 106 verified mineralization south of the La Guama structure, adding that it is the furthest step-out south. 

The company plans to drill additional deep holes using IP survey results to test more mineralization at depth.

Goldquest also intersected two low-grade gold mineralized zones south of Romero in 110 starting from 98 metres and 186 metres downhole, returning 11.8 metres of 0.55 gram gold and 24.4 metres of 0.43 gram gold. Both assays contained low copper values.

On the drill results, Goldquest lost 29¢ to close Nov. 27 at 49¢, on 7.3 million shares traded.