Jacobina zones shaping up for Desert Sun (May 15, 2003)

Drilling by Desert Sun Mining (DSM-V) at the Jacobina project in Bahia state, Brazil, have established potential for a near-surface gold deposit.

Desert Sun recently finished a program of 12 drill holes at the Serra do Corrego prospect, about 2 km north of the Jacobina mill site. The results confirmed those of earlier drilling, which suggested a wide near-surface zone 30 to 40 metres wide carried grades averaging 1 to 1.3 grams gold per tonne.

Five holes for which assays are available all intersected mineralization over true widths of 25.7 to 34.8 metres. The average gold grades ranged from 0.4 to 1.4 grams per tonne. A sixth hole cut a narrower intersection, with a true width of 7.1 metres, but with comparable grades, averaging 1.2 grams per tonne. Most of those intersections included narrower intervals of slightly higher-grade material, typically 3 to 7 metres in true width.

The drilling has defined a zone about 900 metres long, tested to a dept of no more than 100 metres.

Some previously drilled holes are also being re-sampled, as earlier operators sometimes restricted their sampling to visually detectable mineralized zones. Results from re-sampling of one old hole, SCO-71, indicate a grade of 1.5 grams gold per tonne over a true width of 34.9 metres, compared with an earlier result of 0.9 gram through the same interval. A second interval in the same hole, 3.1 metres wide, returned a grade of 2 grams per tonne, compared with 0.2 gram in previous sampling.

Core from six more holes on Serra do Corrego is now in the lab.

A program of 4,000 metres of drilling in 29 holes on the Morro do Vento prospect, 1.5 km south of the Jacobina mill, is just under way.

Induced-polarization surveys are under way, currently testing over areas with known gold mineralization to establish the response of mineralized rocks.