Ongoing surface rock sampling is enabling
The company efforts are aimed at expanding the Northeast, Central and South prospects. Targeting a 250-metre-wide, north-to-northeasterly trending mineralized structural corridor that extends over a strike length of 1,850 metres, the company recently collected 985 chip samples. To date, it has collected 4,756 samples, the average grade of which is 1.56 grams gold per tonne.
The corridor is related to a complex series of converging north-southerly and northeast-southwesterly trending right-lateral slip faults. The faults have produced a large fractured and brecciated zone.
At the Northeast zone, 859 chip samples were taken over a 700-by-400-metre area. They returned an average of 1.27 grams gold, and 71% exceeded 0.31 gram gold with an average grade of 1.73 grams gold. The zone remains open to the north.
A total of 1,614 chip samples was collected over the 550-by-250-metre Central zone. These returned an average of 3.15 grams gold, with 71% exceeding the 0.31-gram mark. The average grade was 4.39 grams gold. Pacific Rim is especially encouraged by a wedge-shaped structure of higher-grade mineralization measuring 400 by 50 metres wide at the northern end of the Central zone and 150 metres wide at the southern end. From this area, crews recovered 487 channel samples averaging 6.02 grams gold. The highest sample assayed 18.3 grams gold over 30 metres.
No new samples were collected from the South zone, where, previously, 580 chip samples were collected over an area measuring 650 by 250 metres. The average grade of those samples was 1.08 grams gold, with 52% exceeding 0.31 gram gold.
The latest batch of sampling has allowed the junior to extend the mineralization identified outside the structural corridor to the north. This new mineralized zone has been outlined over a 400-metre strike length, with a minimum width of 50 metres. It was originally identified by 235 continuous chip samples along a 322-metre sinuous path that returned an average of 1.1 grams gold. The gold mineralization occurs 150 metres below the shale contact, in a sandstone package that is stratigraphically lower than the sandstone unit being sampled in the Main zone.
“Our confidence in the viability of Luicho continues to grow,” says Thomas Shrake, Pacific Rim’s chief executive officer. “The economic importance of outcropping high-grade material cannot be overemphasized. The nature of the gold in late fractures suggests that cyanide solutions should be able to access the gold.”
Shrake says there is evidence of a significant vertical component to the mineralization. Pacific Rim has delineated gold mineralization 150 metres into the stratigraphic section on the western side of the structural corridor and 100 metres along the eastern side.
The 10-sq.-km property, 540 km southeast of Lima, represents a low-sulphidation epithermal prospect. Hosted in sandstone, the mineralization occurs as stockwork quartz veining below an impermeable shale unit. An independent petrographic report has concluded that the gold is hosted in late-stage fracture fillings as free grains associated with quartz and iron oxides.
The company plans to continue its sampling program with cliff chip sampling and underground rock channel sampling of old tunnels. Construction has started on a 6.5-km access road, in preparation for a 12,000-metre reverse-circulation drill program, scheduled to begin this spring.
The sampling is being supervised by Pacific Rim geologists David Ernst and Peter Dilles. The samples are prepared in Bondar-Clegg’s Lima facility and assayed at the company’s labs in Vancouver. A check-assay program is ongoing with Chemex Labs, also in Vancouver.
Pacific Rim agreed to acquire the property in October 1999. The company must spend US$1.4 million by the second anniversary of the signing of the agreement and pay US$24.2 million in cash after the third year. At production, a maximum 3% royalty will be payable to the vendor, a private Peruvian company.
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