Outcrop Gold resumes drilling at Santa Ana
2020-05-05 06:20 ET – News Release
Mr. Joseph Hebert reports
OUTCROP GOLD COMMENCES PHASE 2 DRILL PROGRAM AT SANTA ANA
Drilling has resumed at Outcrop Gold Corp.’s Santa Ana high-grade silver-gold project located in Colombia. This phase 2 program will define the La Ivana mineralized zone to depths of 300 metres in order to build an ore shoot and vein model and then enter a stage of more widespread drilling on nine targets with a potential cumulative strike length of 10 kilometres. Extensive soil sampling and trenches will define drill tests of each target. The phase 2 program has a total of approximately 120 core holes planned for a total of 13,000 metres. Drilling will extend through the end of the calendar year and into the first quarter of 2021, providing sustained news flow of drill and surface assays for the next 11 months. Upon completing the 13,000 metres of drilling Santa Ana will be ready to transition to a delineation stage.
COVID-19 update
Mineral exploration activities have been deemed as essential businesses and the company has received exemptions to operate from the national government of Colombia. The Ministry of Health and Social Welfare has issued guidelines for employees, local workers and suppliers to follow, aimed at reducing the risk of COVID-19 exposure and infection during the conduct of work. Outcrop submitted a formal action plan demonstrating its adherence to guidelines to both the ministry and the Mayor of Falan, the community nearest the project.
Outcrop, in consultation with and as advised by the municipality of Falan, continues to provide basic food items to local communities and continues to contribute to a local COVID-19 general response fund managed by Falan.
To date no cases of COVID-19 infections are known among Outcrop’s team on Santa Ana and Outcrop is adhering to strict guidelines of its agency-approved action plan. Work includes oversight by a health and safety director hired for the project.
Phase 2 program
Outcrop has defined nine core target areas on the project, named La Ivana, El Dorado, Megapozo, Morales, Pollera, Guanabanera, Roberto Tovar, San Antonio and Palomos. The vein system consists of north-northeast-trending veins, linked by northwest-trending veins. Detailed soil sampling and trenching are expected to reveal the general limits of ore shoots to guide drilling. Later in the summer and fall Outcrop will begin reconnaissance prospecting on nearby company-owned mining title applications — additional vein zones are expected to be identified by this work. The objective of this reconnaissance prospecting will be to identify and or secure vein zones with a cumulative extent of at least 14 km within the Mariquita district — with all vein zones close enough to Santa Ana to comprise one consolidated project.
The exploration model assumes drilling will identify numerous ore shoots with average dimensions of 200-metre strike and 300-metre depth with average widths of 0.8 m to 1.4 m. In places these shoots will contain packages of two or more parallel veins. Potential ore shoots will be defined by soil lines on 75 m spacing and trenches on 150 m spacing along the strike of vein zones. The expectation is that ore shoots outcrop or subcrop — and each 600-metre strike of vein zone will contain a 200-metre ore shoot. If a vein segment does not express as an outcropping ore shoot in soils and/or trenches and historic workings it will not be drilled until all anomalous vein segments at surface are drilled as a priority.
Target area Vein system Samples Median Median High High Potential strike
g/t Au g/t Ag g/t Au g/t Ag (m)
El Dorado El Dorado 40 0.50 61.15 7.36 442.00 230
Sewer 3 6.89 12.10 12.80 23.40 220
La Ivana La Porfia 34 2.86 94.95 82.60 838.00 500
La Porfia HW 0 515
Sewer 17 7.45 56.90 68.60 422.00 250
Miraflores 3 1.18 16.60 2.09 22.10 400
Guanabanera Santa Ana 2 0.59 317.23 0.73 623.00 1,600
Megapozo Sewer 8 0.48 84.90 21.30 338.00 450
Santa Ana 2 0.02 1.59 0.04 3.11 1,100
Miraflores 2 2.01 119.04 4.01 238.00 360
La Porfia 0 215
Roberto Tovar Santa Ana 99 0.17 14.70 2.99 100.00 1,650
Miraflores 1 0.03 0.70 460
Morales El Dorado 6 0.23 5.41 0.55 38.00 400
Pollera El Dorado 11 0.36 14.30 1.25 122.00 260
San Antonio Santa Ana 3 0.15 4.14 0.15 4.17 500
Miraflores 15 0.01 0.23 94.30 93.80 500
Palomos Palomos 2 0.17 7.01 5.26 713.00 480
Total 248 10,090
There are strong suggestions that silver is mobile and that silver values are commonly attenuated in the oxide zone at surface — and in many cases silver values will be higher in unoxidized veins. This is suggested in drilling at the La Ivana and Roberto Tovar targets — where surface samples show lower average values than drill assays.
Exploration work will produce over 4,900 samples from soil profiles and trenches. This will represent 10 linear kilometres of soil profiles on 10-metre spacing and 950 linear metres of trenches across mapped and projected vein zones. This work is expected to confirm up to eight to 10 kilometres of cumulative vein zones and commonly each vein zone will contain two or more parallel veins.
Soils and trenches would then move to the Palomos zone on the east side of the project where abundant vein float samples in drainages and limited workings suggest another two kilometres of vein zone may extend across the project.
If the two kilometres of the Palomos vein zone are also productive, up to 16 ore shoots are possible from 13,000 metres. Ore shoots identified would require subsequent delineation but the base case for each ore shoot is 40,000 to 70,000 gold equivalent ounces at 12 to 16 g/t AuEq. Silver-gold ratios vary widely from 8:1 to 400:1. For rough estimates of exploration potential Outcrop is using gold equivalent ounces, although on a project-wide basis more gross metal value will be in silver. All estimates are purely for the purposes of exploration strategy and planning and not intended for any other use. Any estimates would have to be confirmed by independent qualified persons.
Santa Ana vein similarities to Buritica
For perspective on other high-grade, narrow-vein systems in Colombia, intercept widths at Santa Ana compare well with some of the early mechanized, long-hole test stopes at Continental Gold’s Buritica project. At Buritica the 1.2-metre-wide San Antonio vein was developed with a 0.3-metre overbreak on each side to result in a designed 2.3-metre-wide stope (from Continental news release of Feb. 4, 2016).
Importantly, numerous historic workings were intercepted in near-surface phase 1 La Ivana drilling. The average width of intercepted workings in La Ivana is 1.4 metres, which conforms to reports of the 1.4-metre average width of veins actively mined in the colonial period and recorded in the Spanish Royal Archives.
In two drill hole cases (SALPDH-06 and SALPDH-12) vein intercepts were truncated by adjacent workings. In SALPDH-06 the vein and adjacent workings combined provided a 3.1-metre intercept. In SALPDH-12 the vein and adjacent workings combined provided a 1.8-metre intercept. SALPDH-02 and SALPDH-03 both show open workings 1.2 m to three m distant from a drill intercept of vein. In some places wallrock is mineralized.
This is compelling evidence that away from and deeper than primitive workings Outcrop will drill thicker veins on average where there is no truncation by historic mining and that close-spaced parallel veins are common. Outcrop expects to see further in the program vein intercepts of 1.0 to 1.4 metres on average and multiple close-spaced veins as the norm. At Buritica local close-spaced veins and wallrock stockwork (Buritica bulk mineralized zones) can be mined in bulk in wider mechanized stopes.
Correctly developed, narrow high-grade veins, especially multiple close-spaced parallel veins that share development access and can be mined together in bulk, can be very attractive. Near surface La Ivana vein widths are negatively biased by adjacent open stopes that average 1.4 metres.
Phase 1 drilling results
During phase 1 the company discovered a new high-grade gold and silver vein system at La Ivana (news release dated March 2, 2020). La Ivana had never been drilled before and for the nine holes reported in that phase 1 the average downhole intercept length is 0.52 m with a weighted average grade of 21.7 g/t Au and 1,329 g/t Ag. The weighted average for equivalent gold is 36.9 g/t AuEq and the weighted average for equivalent silver is 3,224 g/t AgEq. Highlights included:
- 1.0 metre of 21.3 grams gold per tonne and 4,680 grams silver per tonne;
- 0.50 metre of 58.1 grams gold per tonne and 876 grams silver per tonne;
- 0.50 metre of 5.8 grams gold per tonne and 1,445 grams silver per tonne;
- 0.61 metre of 29.0 grams gold per tonne and 1,675 grams silver per tonne;
- 0.58 metre of 36.2 grams gold per tonne and 325 grams silver per tonne;
- 0.85 metre of 21.4 grams gold per tonne and 373 grams silver per tonne.
About Santa Ana project
The Santa Ana project comprises 3,538 hectares located in the Municipality of Falan, Tolima department, Colombia, approximately 15 km southeast of the town of Mariquita, and 190 km from Bogota, Colombia’s capital city. The Santa Ana project covers a significant part of the Mariquita district where mining records date to at least 1585. The Mariquita district is the highest-grade primary silver district in Colombia. Under colonial-Spanish-era control of the mines, silver grades were reported to be among the highest in Latin America with the 14 mines of Santa Ana producing average smelter returns of 4,300 g/t Ag from veins averaging 1.4 m wide.
Historic mining depths support a geologic and exploration model for a composite mesothermal and epithermal vein system having mineralization that likely extends to great depth. At Santa Ana it is unlikely that there is sharp elevation restriction common to high-grade zones in many epithermal systems with no mesozonal component.
At least 11 principal vein zones are recognized on the project that cumulatively provide up to 14 km of strike length — La Ivana (including the La Porfia vein system), Roberto Tovar (Royal Mines, including the Santa Ana vein system), El Dorado, Morales, Pollera, Guanabanera, San Antonio, Palomos, Murillo, Culebra and Megapozo. The zones commonly each contain multiple parallel veins. The veins can show both high-grade gold and high-grade silver mineralization. Silver-gold ratios are variable — probably related to local prevalent styles of gold mineralization as free gold, sulphide-associated gold and possible silver-gold alloys. Higher-grade gold-silver intercepts commonly show from 1.1 per cent to 3.8 per cent zinc associated with sphalerite. Native silver is observed locally.
About Outcrop Gold Corp.
Outcrop is a gold prospect generator active in Colombia acquiring gold exploration projects with world-class discovery potential. Outcrop performs its own grassroots exploration and then employs a joint venture business model on its projects to maximize investor exposure to discovery and minimize financial risk. Outcrop has seven primary projects in Colombia with three at an advanced stage of exploration. Outcrop will conduct focused drilling on flagship properties such as Santa Ana to create its own catalysts for value creation and to receive full value for future joint ventures or dispositions.
Qualified person
The technical information in this news release has been approved by Joseph P. Hebert, a qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 and president and chief executive officer to the company.
We seek Safe Harbor.
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