Lago likes Juruena enough to add more drills

Lago Dourado Minerals (LDM-V) is showing its confidence in Brazil’s gold mining potential by expanding its drill program before initial results have even been released.

The company says its phase one drill campaign will be boosted to 18,000 metres from 12,000 metres at its flagship Juruena project in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state.

Lago says two drill rigs have been brought to the site and are now turning, up from the initial one drill rig which began the program.

Thus far, Lago has drilled 13 diamond drill holes for 2,600 metres. The program will push through most of 2011 as it tests priority zones on the 70 sq. km project.

One place the drills won’t be turning, however, is at the Crentes target as it has wrapped up drilling at the zone which was drilled in the 1990s by previous operators.

Historic drill results at the site include highlight intercepts of 21.8 metres grading 21 grams gold and 36 metres grading 2.7 grams gold.

With Crentes done, the three rigs are now focusing on previously untested targets.

One of those is the Noventa Graus zone, a four km-long gold-in-soil anomaly that coincides with the contact zone between the two dominant geological blocks in the area.

The other two rigs are targeting the Querosene pit and the Jacare pit. The two zones are called “pits” thanks to the surface workings of artisanals.

The company says some 500,000 oz. of gold has been mined by artisanal miners in just the top 30 metres.

At Querosene, drilling is targeting a low magnetic structure which relates to a highly silicified and brecciated ridge that runs parallel and proximal to the Querosene pit.

Over at Jacare, the company plans to point the drills directly under the pit so that it can test the intersection of a fault zone and a highly fractured rhyodacite volcanic.

The recently listed Lago Dourado only began drilling the project in December of last year.

Lago’s board is headed by its non-executive chairman, Thomas Obradovich, a co-founder of Aurelian Resources.

In Toronto on April 6 the company’s share price was up a penny to 90¢ on 130,700 shares traded.