Surigao’s porphyry copper gold potential confirmed

Vancouver – An independent evaluation of last year’s results at Panoro Minerals Surigao joint venture in the Philippines, confirms the company’s theory about potential for porphyry-style copper and gold over the large land position.The Surgiao project is situated in Surigao del Norte Province on northern Mindanao Island.

Panoro has the option to earn a 42.5% interest in the 245 sq. km area near Philex Gold‘s (PGI-V) Boyongan project on which Anglo American (AU-N) has defined 300 million tonnes averaging 0.6% copper and 1 gram gold per tonne.

In a recent report, Dr. Bruce Rohrlach, an expert in porphyry copper mineralization in the region, pinpoints three target areas – Tapian San Francisco, Tapian Main and Agata – that warrant further work.

These targets are based on drill results, and various levels of geological, geophysical and geochemical surveys under way since last June.

“The Tapian-San Francisco, Tapian Main and Agata properties have high potential for the discovery of both porphyry copper-gold style mineralization at depth and epithermal style mineralization at shallower levels in the vicinity of the principal defined areas,” the report summarizes.

According to Rohrlach, Tapian-San Francisco has very high potential based on extensive IP chargeability anomalies that coincide with high-resistivity, widespread copper and gold anomalies, artisanal workings, widespread hydrothermal alteration, and mineralization.

At Tapian Main, there is potential for a shallow epithermal resource along the Rosario and Samson zones along with a new porphyry target at depth, west and southwest of the Mt.Tapian prospect.

Meanwhile Rohrlach ranks Agata’s potential as high for porphyry-type hydrothermal systems with good potential for nickel laterite.

He recommends exploration and drilling to the tune of US$1.58 million with another US$648,000 to follow up any significant mineralization in the three targeted areas.