Strait Gold expands grassroots exploration in Peru (May 15, 2008)

Hoping to one day fill a void for major companies, Peru-focused Strait Gold (SRD-V) has grown from one to four early-stage projects since going public in the fall of 2006.

The company’s president, Jim Borland, says there is often a gap in exploration spending when larger companies merge and this is contributing to the shortage of new deposits being discovered.

“Their combined exploration budgets are often lower,” Borland said at the company’s annual general meeting, held May 15. “There’s a need for companies like us.”

This summer marks the Strait Gold’s second exploration season the company isn’t able to explore during the winter months.

One of the new properties, Letra Rumi South, a copper porphyry target, will be the focus of a 1,500-metre drill program this summer.

The 9-sq.-km project has also shown evidence of gold, silver and molybdenum, and is located next to the company’s Culebrilla gold property.

Vice-president exploration Ryan Weston, says the property shows potential for bulk tonnage copper, with mineralization detected to 100 to 200 metres depth.

Three strong IP anomalies coincided with surface gossan zones, which are rust-coloured capping or staining of a mineral deposit, signaling oxidation or alteration of iron sulphides. So far, 182 samples were collected from two of the gossans, averaging 0.1% copper, reaching as high as 4.4% copper, 2.5 grams gold per tonne and 77.4 grams silver.

The company will drill five or six holes to depths of 200 to 300 metres.

“If we get encouraging results, we’ll continue,” Borland says.

Strait Gold will also continue with sampling, mapping and geophysics and setting up drill permits at its other properties.

San Jorge is an epithermal silver-gold project where 11 mineralized veins have been sampled during a one-day visit by Weston last July.

“I sampled 11 veins but there are more there,” Weston says. “All came back anomalous.”

Chip samples ran up to 428 grams silver per tonne with 1.5 grams gold across 1.4 metres.

The other newer project is the Pallcamachay copper-gold-molybdenum porphyry project where the company plans to do phase 1 mapping, sampling and IP geophysics this summer.

At Culebrilla, a gold-silver property that Strait Gold drilled last year, the company will continue examining the property.

Only four of 11 known zones were tested in 2007 so Borland says there’s more to check out.

Last year’s 2,000-metre drill program was cut short after 1,300 metres of drilling due to the rainy season. Results showed weakly anomalous to low grade gold-silver mineralization and it was determined that the surface veins were generally discontinuous or poorly mineralized in the subsurface environment.

The company has $1.8 million in the bank, which it expects will see it through three drill programs.

Strait Gold shares were unchanged at 13 today on a volume of 36,000 shares. The company has 23 million shares outstanding.