Ecuador

The Andean Copper Belt contains multiple Tier 1 copper/gold projects and half the worlds copper resources. Ecuador is emerging as host to world class copper and gold deposits and one of the most prospective and under-explored portions of the Andean Copper Belt. A number of majors have made significant commitments to invest in Ecuador including BHP, Anglo, FMG, Hancock and Newcrest.

Location and Access

The property is located within the El Oro Province of southern Ecuador, 35 Kilometers south southeast of the Machala (Ecuador´s fourth largest city) which lies on the Pan-American Highway and contains a world class deep water port.

Access to the property is excellent. The modern Santa Rosa Canton airport at Machala provides air services to Guayaquil and Quito daily. From the Santa Rosa airport access to the property is via paved road (18 km) and gravel road (5 km).

Exploration is uninterrupted all year round with the project located at only 1000m asl. A well-equipped active exploration camp, with a core processing and storage facility, exists at the site. This facility is capable of housing up to 20 workers and has electricity and phone/internet.

Southern Ecuador is one of the most under-explored sections of the Andean Copper Belt, which extends from Chile in the south to Colombia in the north. This belt hosts some of the world’s largest porphyry copper and gold deposits.

Locally the El Guayabo project consists of metamorphic rocks intruded by a series of nested late Oligocene to Early Miocene Alkalic porphyry intrusions. The intrusions range in age from 40 – 10 Ma, suggesting a long-lived intrusive complex as is the case for much of western South America. The intrusions are the same age as those which host the Junin Porphyry copper deposit (982Mt @ 0.89% Cu), and identical in age and composition to those which host the Cangrejos (+17MOz Au) and Gaby (+10MOz Au) Projects some 10km and 40km along strike.

Mineralization has been recognized in:

Favourable conditions to develop high grade mineralization at depth exist such as, development of a sealed system by older metamorphic basement, and amphibolite mafic lithology that could act as a sulphides trap (buffer). This favourable geology has acted as a focus for mineralisation in many know porphyry systems.

Figure 2

Odin Mining and Newmont Mining were active in the Cangrejos – El Guayabo – Osos area beginning in 1992. From 1994 thru 1996, Odin and Newmont carried out a diamond drill campaign that culminated in 7,605 m of diamond core drilling. Kinross Gold Corporation was active in the district from 2006 to 2009 under a farmin agreement with Odin. Kinross’ work included geological mapping and soil and rock sampling. With the exception of an airborne magnetic survey over the property in 2000 no geophysics was undertaken.

This historical exploration appears to have been focused almost exclusively for gold targeting surface gold anomalies or the depth extensions of higher grade gold zones being exploited by the artisanal miners.

Historic geochemistry results (> 6000 samples) are representative of a typical porphyry copper zonation. The project presents two Cu-Mo-Pb zones, surrounded by outer halo with Au+Ag+Zn+Sb. This supports the evidence recognized in drill holes, that suggest that the magmatic-hydrothermal breccias are related to a porphyry copper source (Cu±Au±Mo system).

Figure 3

The Historical drilling results are listed in the table below. The majority of the 33 historical drill holes intersected significant width of ore grade material including:

The assay suite and follow up confirm that exploration appears to have been focused almost exclusively for high grade gold. The initial 5 drill holes were assayed for gold only and never followed-up or assayed for copper despite returning wide (+100m) intervals of 0.4 g/t Au with visible chalcopyrite logged in the core.

Figure 4

Since the Company acquired the project in 2019 it has conducted an extensive exploration program including:

Selected drill intercepts from this Phase 1 and 2 Drill program include:

More recently the surface Company has started a rock-saw Channel Sampling program designed to test for the extensions of the high-garde core of the MRE to surface in the upper 200 metres of the GY-A anomaly which forms a steep hill. Drilling was not conducted in the upper 200 metres as a man portable rig with helicopter support would be required. The program is being conducted on section lines spaced at 50 metres along strike with the same orientation as the Phase 1 and 2 drilling (Figure 5 Plan View). All rock outcrop encountered on the section lines is sampled continuously over the entire outcrop length.

Importantly, the first of the sampling lines to cut the prognosed up-dip extension of the high-grade core of the MRE at GY-A (the Copper Breccia) returned high-grade mineralisation at surface. This provides confirmation that the Copper Breccia mineralisation, which is the high-grade core of the MRE at GY-A, extends to surface and 200 metres up-dip of the current MRE boundary.

Recent results include:

The MRE will be updated once all results from this program of surface and underground rock-saw channel sampling are received.