Tempus Resources Ltd (ASX:TMR, TSX-V:TMRR) has started Phase 2 exploration at the early-stage Valle del Tigre Project (VdT) in the highly prospective Cordillera del Condor mineral belt of southeast Ecuador.
VdT’s licence boundary is about 2.5 kilometres northwest of Lundin Mining’s Fruta del Norte epithermal gold-silver mine and around 15 kilometres southwest of the Mirador copper-gold porphyry deposit, owned by CRCC-Tongguan Investment Co.
The property is underlain by the same sedimentary and volcanic rock formations and lies within the same rift faulting corridor as Fruta del Norte and the Jurassic Mineral Belt.
Valle del Tigre & Rio Zarza location.
Phase 2 exploration begins
The Phase 2 program is a larger scale follow-up to initial reconnaissance work undertaken in February last year, where TMR found areas with anomalous gold and copper.
Phase 2 exploration will include a Mobile Metals Ion (MMI) geochemistry sampling program over an area of focus of about 12.5 square kilometres, where approximately 1,100 MMI samples will be taken.
MMI analysis used for the soil samples successfully demonstrated trends of more than 2 kilometres that are anomalous in gold and copper, bismuth, molybdenum and nickel. MMI analysis is proving to be very effective as a vectoring tool for gold, copper and other pathfinder elements in the Rio Zarza and VdT area.
Sample spacing is planned at 200 metres x 50 metres and where possible, stream sediment and grab samples will also be collected.
TMR’s Phase 1 program is still underway and will overlap with Phase 2.
Phase 1 covers the airborne geophysics chargeability anomaly identified by Tempus in 2019.
Looking for significant scale
“The Phase 2 exploration program at Valle del Tigre will provide a comprehensive expansion of the survey of mineralised areas identified in 2021 soil sampling and 2019 geophysics. With the prolific mineralisation in the region, we are looking for something of significant scale,” Tempus president and CEO Jason Bahnsen said.
Geophysics have already shown trends coincident with known regional structures important to mineralisation in the area.
The geophysics highlights the NNW-SSE structure bound by NE-SW structures at VdT, similar to the controlling structures present at Lundin’s Fruta del Norte.
Results from the initial Phase 1 sampling program confirmed the presence of gold and copper mineralisation at Valle del Tigre.