Pacific Rim cuts high-grade at El Dorado (August 19, 2002)

Vancouver — Pacific Rim Mining (PMU-V) has cut high-grade gold at the El Dorado project in El Salvador.

The announcement follows the receipt of assay results for the bottom 70 metres of hole P02-204, as well as all the assays for holes P02-205 and -206. Results are pending for four other holes.

Hole P02-204 cut 0.25 metre averaging 26.78 grams gold and 183 grams silver per tonne starting at 341.6 metres down-hole. This was followed by a 0.55-metre section of 9.39 grams gold and 57 grams silver starting at 345.65 metres downhole. Pacific Rim states that these narrow, high-grade veins do not correlate with any known veins at the surface. As a result, their orientation and true width have yet to be determined.

Drill hole P02-205 was designed to pass through the El Dorado vein at an elevation of 200 metres, and through the Minita vein at an elevation of 100 metres. Assays from the El Dorado vein were below the 6 grams gold per tonne cutoff. However, the Minita vein intersection returned 9.33 grams gold and 56 grams silver over a true width of 9.75 metres. This intercept cuts the Minita vein system about 60 metres below, and north of, previous drilling outside of the current Minita resource area.

Hole P02-206 tested the southern Moreno, the southern Minita and the El Dorado veins. The southern Minita vein averaged 55.49 grams gold per tonne and 159 grams silver over a true width of 1.1 metres. The intersection is 295 metres above sea level and roughly 50 metres south of the Minita resource area.

Follow-up drilling is planned for the coming months.

“We are pleased with the results of the El Dorado drill program to date,” says Pacific Rim’s chief executive officer, Thomas Shrake. “High-grade gold mineralization has been identified both north and south of the existing resource, which may eventually result in an expansion of this resource and of other veins. There are many high-quality targets that remain to be drill-tested, both in the centre of the project area and elsewhere.”

As drilling continues, the company is developing additional targets through mapping and trenching. Two samples in the Minita 3 vein, north of the Minita resource, yielded 15.38 grams gold and 13.63 grams gold over a width of 0.1 metre. In addition, the southern extension of the Nueva Esperanza vein was sampled 150 metres south of where previous shallow drilling tested this vein. Two separate samples were taken across the vein and averaged 21.03 and 12.26 grams gold over widths of 0.95 and 0.6 metres, respectively.

The El Dorado district is an adularia-sericite type epithermal gold system which hosts bonanza gold. More than 35 known quartz veins have been identified, and these have a total strike length in excess of 18 km. Previous drilling determined that the highest-grade gold was encountered in a “productive interval” that occurs in the elevation range of 100-250 metres above sea level. To date, only two veins have been systematically drill-tested in the productive interval.

The Minita vein system was mined in the mid-1900s and currently hosts an indicated source of 799,200 tonnes with an average grade of 13.7 grams gold and 97.9 grams silver per tonne below the old stopes.