Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp. Announces Santa Barbara Drill
Results of 420 Meters @ 0.571 g/t Gold Including: 101.66m @ 1.017
g/t Gold and 132.90m @ 0.617 g/t Gold at the Condor Gold Project in
Southeast Ecuador
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VANCOUVER,
Oct. 17, 2012 /CNW/ - Ecuador Gold
& Copper Corp. (TSX-V: EGX), (the "Company" or
"EGX") is pleased to announce assay results from the first
new drill hole at the South Zone of the Santa Barbara gold porphyry
deposit located within the Company's major Condor gold and copper
concessions in Southeast
Ecuador.
This News Release reports assays from the first
new drill hole on the Santa Barbara gold porphyry deposit, part of
the previously announced 10,000 meter Phase I drill program on the
Company's Condor Gold property. The 420 meters of mineralization
includes two zones of higher grade mineralization and confirms the
potential for Santa Barbara to become a large bulk tonnage gold
porphyry deposit. Drill hole DSB-19 was collared one hundred meters
east of two previously drilled holes, DSB-5 and DSB-16, ended in
mineralization at 600m, and extends the known mineralized zone to
the east and to depth. Drill hole DSB-19 was drilled as a follow-up
to the two previous holes drilled on the same section: DSB-16 of
total depth 249m intersecting 228m of 1.01 g/t gold; and DSB-5 of
total depth 288.5m intersecting 136m of 1.11 g/t gold and a further
30m of 0.78 g/t gold. See attached cross-section and location
map.
Assay Results from Santa Barbara South Zone
Hole DSB-19
Drill Hole |
From (m) |
To (m) |
Interval (m) |
Au (g/t) |
Cu (%) |
Ag (g/t) |
DSB-19 |
180.00 |
600.00 |
420.00 |
0.571 |
0.082 |
1.157 |
Including |
191.54 |
293.20 |
101.66 |
1.017 |
0.108 |
0.838 |
and |
344.10 |
477.00 |
132.90 |
0.617 |
0.101 |
1.121 |
- g/t = grams per metric tonne.
- The true width of down hole interval lengths are estimated
to be approximately 50% to 60%.
Commentary
Drill hole DSB-19 intersected continuous gold
mineralization over 420m from 180m to end of hole at 600m.
Grade is distributed in long intercepts (0.5-1.5 g/t). Best
grades are in andesite, especially between 200m-300m. There are
other encouraging gold intersections down the hole, and the hole
terminated in a sedimentary calc-silicate rock containing gold
mineralization for over 100m of drill intercept.
10,000 Meter Phase I Drill Program
The Santa Barbara gold porphyry deposit is one
of five targets including three epithermal gold targets (Los
Cuyves, Soledad and Chinapintza) in the northern part of the Condor
gold and copper concessions together with a promising El Hito
copper-molybdenum porphyry target located 5km east of Santa Barbara
that have been prioritized for resource expansion drilling by the
Company.
The third and fourth drill holes, part of the
10,000 meter Phase I drill program are currently underway, drilling
the Los Cuyes and Soledad epithermal targets respectively. Assays
from the first new drill hole at the Chinapintza deposit are
currently pending.
Drilling at the El Hito porphyry
copper-molybdenum porphyry target is planned for November,
2012.
Drilling completed to date is 1900 meters.
Follow-up drilling at Santa Barbara will commence as soon as a
drill rig is available.
Existing Resources
The Condor Gold Project contains a Measured
& Indicated Mineral Resource of 1.52 million ounces gold
(within 50.4 Mt grading 0.94 g/t gold). Additional Inferred Mineral
Resources contain 1.28 million ounces gold (within 28.4 Mt
grading 1.4 g/t gold). The measured resources consist of 54,000
ounces of gold (within 147,000 tonnes grading 1.0 g/t gold) and the
indicated resources consist of 1.47 million ounces gold (within
50.3 Mt grading 0.94 g/t). For more information, please see
the Company's resource table at www.ecuadorgoldandcopper.com or its
Technical Report dated June 14, 2012
which is available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at
www.sedar.com.
Quality Assurance
The Company has implemented a quality assurance
and quality control program to ensure that the transport, sampling
and analysis of all samples is conducted in accordance with the
best possible practices. Drill core is transported from the drill
by employees to the Company's secure core logging facility at its
camp where, after geotechnical and geological logging, it is marked
for sampling. The entire hole is sampled and core samples are
generally 2m in length, varying at geological contacts to between
1.5m and 2.5m and are split in half by EGX employees. One
half is retained in a secure storage facility and the other half is
transported by EGX employees or a bonded courier to ACME Labs'
sample preparation facility in Cuenca, Ecuador where the core sample is crushed so
that 80% passes a 10 mesh screen and a 250g split is pulverized so
that 85% passes a 200 mesh screen. From Cuenca ACME Labs
ships the samples to their laboratory in Santiago, Chile for analysis. The lab is
ISO/IEC 17025:2005 (CAN-P-4E) certified. Samples are analyzed for
gold by 30-gm fire assay with an AA finish and by gravimetric
methods for assays over 10 ppm. Samples are analyzed for silver by
ICP-ES after a four acid digestion. For silver assays over
200 ppm samples, are analyzed using ACME Labs 7AR method consisting
of hot aqua regia digestion and ICP-ES analysis. ACME Labs are
independent from the Company.
Under the Company's QA-QC procedures, samples
are submitted for re-analysis based on their proximity to a
certified reference standard that returns a value greater than
three standard deviations higher or lower than the mean value for
that standard. In addition, any two consecutive reference standards
falling outside the two standard deviation threshold will be
considered to have failed. Since every twentieth sample is a
reference standard, ten samples above and below a failed standard
will be re-analyzed. The same protocol will be applied to duplicate
samples considered to have unacceptably divergent gold values.
Periodically, random samples will be submitted to another
laboratory as an external check on the results provided by the
primary lab.
Qualified Person
Mit Tilkov, P.Geo., VP Exploration of Ecuador
Gold and Copper Corp. is the qualified person, as defined by
National Instrument 43-101, supervised the project field work, and
is responsible for the preparation of the technical information in
this release.
Cautionary Note
The Company has not completed a preliminary
economic assessment or feasibility study of the Condor Gold Project
under National Instrument 43-101, and there is no assurance that
the exploration and subsequent development operations of the Condor
Gold Project will be economically or technically viable.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its
Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the
policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for
the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SOURCE Ecuador Gold and Copper Corp.
Image with caption: "Section A - A' (CNW Group/Ecuador Gold and
Copper Corp.)". Image available at:
http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20121017_C7647_PHOTO_EN_19482.jpg
Image with caption: "Santa Barbara South Zone (CNW Group/Ecuador
Gold and Copper Corp.)". Image available at:
http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20121017_C7647_PHOTO_EN_19483.jpg