Ovoca Gold reports maiden JORC gold resource at Olcha

Ovoca Gold (LON:OVG) has reported a 344,000oz maiden JORC inferred gold resource at its Olcha gold project in the North Eastern part of the Magadan Region of Russia. The company highlighted that the maiden resource was generated from historic drilling and trenching data, and the 2010 drill program is designed to in-fill gaps in the data to potentially expand the resource.

"The JORC maiden resource for Olcha is a significant milestone for Ovoca as it advances the property”, Ovoca Chief Executive Tim McCutcheon commented.

The maiden resource is based on 16,455 meters of diamond drilling across 144 holes to depths of 336.8 metres, and 12.3 kilometres of trenching. Importantly, the company highlighted that not all of the historic data has been used for the resource model, mainly due to the lack of data points between various drill results.

“The initial field work at the site was started with the intention to find a bulk-tonnage open-pittable resource. As the geological data was analyzed during and after acquisition, our geologists have re-designed the goal behind the exploration effort to focus on a higher grade, underground resource”, McCutcheon said.

“Ovoca needs to link and expand these results to demonstrate ore-body continuity plunging at depth. Our 2010 drill program is designed to do exactly that, and we hope to announce in short order the results of our work for this field season." Follow-up drilling, designed to fill-in gaps in the data, is currently underway. Already to date 4,000m has been drilled in the 2010 program, of a total approximately 8,000m diamond drilling, and 3.6km of trenching.

The Olcha project is located on the Southern part of the Rassoshinskaya license area, in the North-eastern part of the Magadan Region, approximately 700km from Magadan. Ovoca described the property’s geology as: “an extrusion-explosion geological formation saturated with major veins, which are linked erratically with vein-veinlets (stockworks) sub-zones controlled by fault structures”. The mineralisation constitutes a “a low sulphidation epithermal gold deposit ... ore bearing rock is mainly andesite and andesite-basalt breccias, which cover about a quarter of the total Olcha area”.

According to Ovoca, the central part of the Olcha ore field extends for more than 2,500m in length, with widths of up to 1,000m.  The deposit remains open along strike, with an existing strike length of approximately 3km, and at depth.

The historic drilling data includes numerous high-grade intervals, with the highlights featuring drill-hole C-121(in the Centralny Zone 1) which cut 27.9 metres grading 4.7 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 21.4g/t silver, including higher grade intervals of 2m at 25.1g/t gold and 77.8g/t, and 4m at 6.9g/t gold and 43.5g/t silver.

Overall the drill highlights ranged from 4.7-35.2g/t gold and 10-97.8g/t silver, across length ranging from approximately 1 metre to 27.9 metres.

The company also highlighted the findings of previous metallurgical testing which revealed metal recoveries reaching over 97% for gold and 74% for silver. “The metallurgical characteristics of the ore are amenable to conventional gravitation, flotation and direct cyanidation processing techniques”, Ovoca stated.

Ovoca Gold’s wholly-owned subsidiary, ZAO Bulun owns the Rassoshinskaya exploration license, which runs until 13.02.2011, and can be subsequently extended upon successful petition to the Russian authorities. Ovoca believes it will be able to secure a 3-year extension to the exploration license, and all or part of the license area can be converted into exploitation status, with a typical 25 term, upon commercial discovery and petition.