Trio Gold pulls hot copper hole in Idaho

Vancouver – A single drill hole by Trio Gold (TGK-V) on its Empire Mine project, in Custer Cty, Idaho, cut very high-grade copper mineralization.

Core hole TDD04-1 was only drilled to about 30-metres depth, but intersected 5.8-metres grading 4.23% copper, including 1.5-metre of 13.5% copper at the end of the hole which was terminated for budgetary reasons.

The hole was placed in the AP pit area, and was cased, allowing the company to continue with its plans to deepen it to at least 100 metres.

The top 18 metres of the hole cut feldspar porphyry, with skarn mineralization encountered in the following 12 metres. Within the skarn intercept, the core drilling encountered about 6 metres of historic, underground workings that were void space.

Besides its single core drill hole, Trio Gold recently drilled nine reverse circulation (RC) holes in the centre of the AP pit to test the extent of oxide copper mineralization, with results pending, and also extracted a 2.3-tonne surface bulk sample for metallurgical testing.

The Empire Mine is a past producing underground copper-silver-gold-zinc operation that ran between 1901 and 1942, producing some 694,000 tonnes of ore grading 3.6% copper, 53.8 grams silver per tonne and 1.6 grams gold per tonne from polymetallic skarn mineralization.

A 1995-97 work program by Cambior (CBJ-T), including 47 core drill holes, resulted in a non-National Instrument 43-101 compliant oxide copper resource estimate of 18 million tonnes grading 0.49% copper, 0.19% zinc, 13.5 grams silver and 0.48 grams gold. Cambior had focused on the near-surface, oxide zone, which remains open along strike. An additional resource of 9 million tonnes grading 0.29% copper and 0.31% zinc, with no precious metal values, was also outlined.

A preliminary feasibility report, prepared by Sierra Mining and Engineering in 2001, proposed that the oxide copper mineralization may be amenable to solvent-extraction/electrowinning (SX-EW), and that the deeper sulphide mineralization is amenable to standard milling with flotation recovery.

Trio Gold is earning a 100% interest in the project from private Idaho company Sultana Resources for a payment of US$50,000 (completed), the issuance of 1-million shares and the completion of a bankable feasibility study. Upon any commercial production, a further 1.5 million shares are issuable to Sultana, who will retain a 0.5% NSR. The project also has an underlying 3% NSR by the owners.

Trio recently closed a $420,000 private placement (8.4-million shares at 5 per share) to fund its planned work program at the Empire Mine.

Investors leapt on the issue, with the company’s shares soaring from 8.5 to a high of 27.5 per share before a trading halt for the release. Upon being brought back to trade, the shares pulled back to the 18-to-20 level. The company has 47.4-million shares outstanding.