Long gold hits at Condor for Ecuador Gold and Copper

VANCOUVER — A 10,000-metre drill program at the Condor copper-gold project in southeast Ecuador is returning long, mineralized intercepts for Ecuador Gold and Copper (EGX-V).

The drill program is a first for the junior explorer, which debuted on the TSX Venture Exchange in July 2012. The company is completely focused on Condor, an 83 sq. km land package in the Zamora gold-and-copper belt south of Kinross Gold’s (K-T) 13.7 million oz. Fruta del Norte gold project.

The northern half of Condor boasts a handful of low-sulphidation targets, where mineralization is hosted in breccia pipes and narrow fault veins. The south is home to classic copper-gold porphyry mineralization, plus structurally controlled zones of higher-grade gold.

Ecuador Gold is focused on the southern sector in its current drill program, with the company’s drills testing the El Hito and Santa Barbara porphyry targets. Santa Barbara is already home to 21 million inferred tonnes grading 1 gram gold per tonne. A resource has not yet been defined at El Hito.

The latest news came from Santa Barbara, where drill hole 21 intersected the main gold zone 50 metres south of the known mineralized envelope to return 350 metres at 0.74 gram gold, 0.11% copper and 1.09 grams silver per tonne, starting 68 metres downhole. The intercept included 206 metres at 1.01 grams gold.

In October hole 19 cut an even longer intercept: 420 metres averaging 0.571 gram gold, 0.082% copper and 1.157 grams silver, starting at 180 metres downhole. Hole 20, collared 100 metres northwest of the mineralized zone, failed to return significant results.

The company is preparing to drill another seven holes at Santa Barbara to extend the resource south and east. Two drill rigs are being mobilized to the area.

Ecuador Gold also has drills turning at the El Hito target, a copper-molybdenum porphyry target that’s 4 km east of Santa Barbara. The company collared its first El Hito drill hole 200 metres south of four historic holes and immediately hit mineralization: hole 5 returned 703 metres of almost continuous mineralization that averaged 0.31% copper and 1.18 grams silver, starting just 8 metres downhole.

Ecuador Gold estimates that true widths are 50–60% of drilled widths.

The porphyry copper mineralization at El Hito is associated with a Late Jurassic dioritic intrusive complex. Steeply dipping intrusive contacts, quartz veins and faults striking north to northwest define two major structural orientations, and the majority of the diorite complex is moderately to strongly altered.

Ecuador Gold notes that Dorato Resources (DRI-V) has had exploration success on its Condor project, which is just east of El Hito, but over the border in Peru.

Other targets areas at Ecuador Gold’s Condor project include Los Cuyes, Soledad and Chinapintza, which are all epithermal showings in the northern half of the land  package. Most of the project’s 50.4 million measured-and-indicated tonnes come from these three deposits, and bear an average grade of 0.94 gram gold and 7.06 grams silver. Two other zones, known as San Jose 1 and Enma, also contribute to the count. Santa Barbara represents most of Condor’s inferred resource count, which totals 28.4 million tonnes grading 1.4 grams gold and 3.79 grams silver. 

Ecuador Gold kicked off a 10,000-metre drill program at Condor in August. At the end of January the company had completed 7,000 metres of drilling.

To fund the drill effort, Ecuador Gold has raised money twice. In November the company raised US$2.5 million in a private placement, selling 11.9 million units at US21¢ apiece. Each unit comprised a share and half a warrant, with warrants exercisable at US35¢ within 36 months.

In February the company raised US$3.5 million by selling 16.7 million units under the same terms.
News of the latest drill results from Santa Barbara had no effect on the company’s share price, which remained at 7.5¢.