Royal Road Minerals Ltd (CVE:RYR) announced progress on its Nicaraguan aims, as it received the go-ahead to drill two deep holes at the Los Andes project in western Nicaragua.
The permit comes from the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in the country and is for two diamond holes of 1,000m (meters) vertical depth from two locations at the Carrao prospect area.
The permission is valid for 18 months from December 18 this year, said Royal Road.
"We are grateful for the support of our local communities and for the hard work of our social and environmental teams who worked in close collaboration with our partner the Centro de Entendimiento con la Naturaleza, to obtain these drilling permissions," said Dr. Tim Coughlin, Royal Road's president and CEO. "We look forward to testing the potential of this new target and hope to commence drilling as soon as possible in 2019."
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The project features a 7 km-long, strongly altered caldera-controlled "lithocap" that hosts anomalous copper, gold and pathfinder elements in rock-chip geochemical samples.
Exploratory drilling campaigns conducted in 2014 and 2015 hit strong alteration and anomalous copper and gold.
In 2015, an airborne geophysical survey was conducted over the area and highlighted a well-defined magnetic anomaly at the southern limit of the caldera structure, now known as the Carrao prospect area.
Three holes were sunk and all intersected anomalous copper mineralization with one drill hole (QZP-003), intersecting some 150 meters of massive pyrite, of a style interpreted to be consistent with the upper parts of an underlying porphyry copper-gold system.
Royal Road reckons that any potential economic mineralization would be at a depth in excess of 200 meters below the surface.
Shares were unchanged in Toronto at $0.065.
Contact Giles Gwinnett at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
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