Sunstone expands landholding near its large El Palmar gold-copper find in Ecuador Sunstone Metals Ltd announced that it has agreed to acquire the Verde Chico Project in northern Ecuador through a Staged Acquisition Agreement from the Verde Chico Group.
The Verde Chico project is located to the west of Sunstone’s El Palmar gold-copper porphyry discovery and quadruples Sunstone’s land position in this prospective belt in northern Ecuador to 3,672 ha. Sunstone Managing Director Malcolm Norris said: “This is an exceptional opportunity for Sunstone to secure a large, highly prospective landholding close to our El Palmar gold-copper discovery.
“The area is extremely prospective for both epithermal gold and porphyry gold-copper mineralisation. We will embark on a systematic exploration program, as we have done with considerable success at our El Palmar and Bramaderos projects”.
The Verde Chico project was explored by the Rio Tinto group (then called RTZ) in 1992-1995, and by Canadian junior Balaclava Mines in 1998. No exploration has been undertaken on the land since 1998. The historical exploration identified a 1.1km-long gold-in-soil anomaly that is open to the north and south, and which includes several high-grade gold-bearing veins at surface and wide lower grade zones of gold mineralisation in some drill holes. A total of 12 trenches for 683m were opened and sampled following mineralised structures.
A total of 28 drill holes for 4,436m were drilled by RTZ and Balaclava. The area of initial effective exploration only covers approximately 10% of the concession.
Historical exploration comprised regional stream sediment sampling, soil sampling, limited geophysics (CSAMT), trench sampling, and diamond drilling. The soil sampling by Rio Tinto defined a >1.1km long gold-insoil anomaly, coincident with a CSAMT resistivity anomaly. This area was drilled at several locations and returned significant intervals of gold mineralisation including 68.5m at 1.05g/t gold from surface in hole RVC-08, including 1m at 11.3g/t gold from 40.5m.
Trenching delivered locally very high grades across and along multiple veins at surface including.
Perdida vein – 6.5m @ 25.11 g/t Au
Peligrosa vein – 24m @ 21.2 g/t Au, 19m @ 7.72 g/t Au, 25m @ 10.24 g/t Au
Gato vein – 39m @ 3.08 g/t Au
Pavas vein – 26.5 @ 2.28 g/t Au, 10m @ 11.72 g/t Au
Oso Hormiguero vein – 29m @ 8.26 g/t Au, 11m @ 9.08 g/t Au
Falla vein – 8m @ 7.28 g/t Au
During technical due diligence nothing has come to the attention of Sunstone that causes it to question the accuracy or reliability of the historical exploration results.
Sunstone will undertake a systematic exploration program commencing once the full Staged Acquisition.
(Source: Press Releases – www.sunstonemetals.com.au/site/PDF/d28da1d5-a12e-4c45-978f-e56e878781c6/SunstoneexpandslandpositionnearElPalmardiscovery)
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