Mariana Resources (LON:MARL) said this morning it has struck bonanza grades of gold and silver at its project in Patagonia.
The company says there is potential for high-grade gold mineralization along the 450 metre strike vein-breccia trend at Calandria Norte, part of the Las Calandrias area in Santa Cruz Province, Argentina.
Hole CND 60 produced 30.5 grams per tonne over 45 centimetres and 145 grams of silver over a length 91.7 metres.
The adjacent drill hole, CND 61, produced a concentration of 34.1 grams per tonne of gold over 5 metres and 32 grams of silver over 199 metres.
Eleven diamond drill holes were completed at Norte for a total of almost 1,400 metres, building on an earlier programme.
“The latest holes were drilled over about 200m strike in the central portion of the vein trend,” the company said in a stock exchange statement.
“All holes intersected gold mineralisation within a broad marcasite stockwork envelope with holes 60, 61 and 64 intersecting high grades.”
Yesterday Mariana removed another layer of risk from its promising Las Calandrias gold-silver project by acquiring the freehold surface rights to the licence area in Patagonia.
The purchase also gives the company more flexibility in the future to fast-track the exploration and development of the site.
The surface rights cover all of the known Mariana gold mineralised zones at Las Calandrias as well as those areas considered to be the highly prospective for new gold discoveries.
The agreement allows the former owner occupy and farm livestock on all vacant land at but prevents him interfering with any exploration and future mining operations.
Mariana has a project office on site as well as two new core sheds and the recently purchased new camp facility.
This will cater for 36 people and is fully operational now that a 10,000 metre drill programme is underway to define a maiden resource at Las Calandrias.
Mariana's Chairman John Horsburgh said: "The purchase of the freehold surface rights demonstrates our commitment to our flagship Las Calandrias project as we continue to advance the project through the development cycle and up the value curve.
“The purchase not only secures our access to the project but gives us future flexibility to optimise further exploration work and development infrastructure.
"Mariana is continually engaging local communities and has maintained a very good relationship with the previous owner which we hope to build upon as we develop the Las Calandrias project.
“We believe this purchase demonstrates Mariana's commitment to the project, local community and the Santa Cruz Province as a place where junior explorers can add wealth for shareholders through discovery and development."
The company’s broker FinnCap said the freehold purchase is a positive step in the development of the Argentinean project.
Analyst Joe Lunn said: “It removes the risk of a third party delaying the project in the future by demanding a high level of compensation in return for relinquishment of these rights. We expect the assay results of the first holes at Las Calandrias shortly.”
The project is located in the Deseado Masif, the up-and-coming area in Argentina for gold and silver discoveries.
It is divided in two – Calandria Sur and Calandria Norte – and the licence is 100 per cent owned by Mariana.
Around a year ago Sutcliffe and his team drilled 1,350 metres of holes around Norte and came away with very little.
“We got a few metres with a few grams of gold,” managing director John Sutcliffe told Proactive Investors recently.
However he had better luck when he began a second round of drilling to 70 metres that struck bonanza grades of gold between 338 grams and 443 grams per tonne.
“It is pretty amazing. But both intersections are very narrow - in one case one metre and the other 80 centimetres,” Sutcliffe says.
The first programme, completed in October 2009, did find a very viable target at Sur, which the Mariana MD says is “stacking up to be bulk minable”.
The grades here range between 0.9 grams per tonne and 2.4 grams, but are spread over a much greater area.
However Sutcliffe reckons the drill programme is yet to uncover Sur’s full potential.
“Calandria Sur is a bowl with the gold like a soup at the bottom of the basin,” he explains.
“The gold is spread out over a large area. What we are looking for is where the gold came from, because it didn’t just appear in that rock. It didn’t form that way. It has got to have come from some sort of feeder zone.
“I think the feeder zone is something like Calandria Norte, which is a vein of a high-grade multi-ounce feeder zone.
“Perhaps what we haven’t found at Calandria Sur is what could actually be the future if the project.
“It is going to be hard to find (the feeder zone) and we may not find it in this round of drilling. If we don’t find it then this project is still going to have legs.”
While Mariana continues to look for the source of the gold at Sur, the drilling is also designed to help it compile a resource estimate, which it hopes to publish by the “first part of next year”.
However Mariana isn’t a one project play.
Drilling at Sierra Blanca, in Argentina, will begin by the end of the year with the potential for silver-gold discovery. Mariana owns 70 percent of Sierra Blanca, though it has an option to a buy the remaining 30 per cent from IAMGOLD.