Positive audit for Honduran gold find — Mar-West, Curion continue drilling San Martin concession

An independent audit of the Sinter hot springs gold deposit on the San Martin concession in central Honduras has concluded that the previously reported drill results are a fair representation of the deposit’s gold grade.

The 14,100-ha San Martin concession is held 80% by Mar-West Resources (MSR-V) and 20% by Curion Ventures (CUV-V).

A recent 73-hole program of reverse-circulation drilling outlined a near-surface oxide gold resource in excess of 20 million tonnes grading 1.3 grams gold per tonne. The resource is contained in a blanket-like zone that parallels the topographic surface of a dome-shaped hill measuring 900 metres in diameter.

The audit was conducted by California-based MRDI in an attempt to verify the gold grades pulled from the first phase of drilling on the Sinter zone and to evaluate the sampling and assaying procedures that were employed.

MRDI twinned three holes previously drilled by the joint venture. Two of these were twinned with the same reverse-circulation rig used by Mar-West. MRDI’s twinned holes returned grades of 1.23 grams over 32 metres and 1.54 grams over 22.9 metres, compared with the joint venture’s results of 1.3 and 1.62 grams for the original holes. If the assay results are capped at 0.4 gram, the twinned holes average 1.19 and 1.52 grams, compared with 1.19 and 1.51 grams for the original holes.

A third hole was twinned by MRDI using a diamond drill rig. The twinned hole returned a grade of 0.69 gram — much lower than original 1.49 grams. MRDI says this disparity may be due either to a high-grade intersection of 12.6 grams, which was cut in the original hole and not intersected in the twinned hole, or to poor core recoveries (as low as 67%, but averaging 92% overall).

Again, if the results are capped at 0.4 gram, the twinned core hole averages a grade of 0.69 gram, while the original hole averages 0.83 gram.

MRDI undertook a quality-control check of the drill program by re-assaying 36 archive samples stored on the property. MRDI concluded that there was consistency between the original assays and the check assays.

In the meantime, exploration work is ongoing on the San Martin concession in an effort to define targets for drilling in October.

A preliminary scoping study of the Sinter gold zone is being prepared by Fluor Daniel Wright, and metallurgical tests are attempting to determine whether the zone is amenable to heap leaching.