Near Quebec City Soquem drills base metal find

Soquem, the Quebec government’s mineral exploration company, has discovered zinc-copper-silver-gold mineralization on its wholly owned Dussault property, 40 km northwest of the former Montauban mines in Quebec.

Since it registered 143 claims last winter, Soquem has been working on a relatively unexplored area within the same belt as the former Montauban lead-zinc mines. The government body has also staked an additional 250 claims further north of the discovery which resulted from ground prospecting undertaken to explain the source of EM anomalies outlined by an airborne survey.

So far, Soquem has outlined four horizons (or structures) containing polymetallic massive sulphides, the largest of which can be traced over a minimum length of 800 metres and over minimum widths of 2-9 metres. Preliminary assays from this zone include values of 0.4% copper and 5.4% zinc over three metres. Anomalous gold and silver values are also associated with this mineralization. Soquem says surface samples collected from other mineralized areas returned values of 9.6% zinc, 1.7% copper and 1.0 gram gold per tonne.

With a drill rig already on site, Soquem will spend about $250,000 by next March on the Dussault property on detailed ground geophysics and 2,500 metres of diamond drilling, according to Denis Simoneau, general manager of exploration.

Scheduled to be drilled 100 metres apart, the drill holes are designed to probe to a depth of 60 metres to test for continuity and persistence of mineralization.