Southern Chile focus for Arauco

Four local mining groups have teamed up to form a new company directed exclusively at finding mineral deposits in Latin America, with Southern Chile being the primary exploration target.

The venture involves Princeton Mining (TSE), Rea Gold (TSE), Donald McLeod’s Northair Group and Brad Cooke’s ARC Resource Group. In late 1990, the four participants set up a private company, Arauco Resources, and funded a US$200,000 reconnaissance program in southern Chile to identify precious and base metal targets. The company is expected to eventually be taken public on the Vancouver Stock Exchange.

Arauco is under the direction of principals of the four experienced mining groups, with Patrick Burns and consultant Richard Culbert being key players on the technical team. Burns and Culbert operate from an office in Santiago, and both have considerable exploration experience in Chile.

Chile has been an attractive exploration focus for a number of companies in recent years, but most of this effort has been directed to the deserts of northern Chile.

Arauco is focusing its attention on southern Chile, which is forested and which has received little exploration in the modern context although the area is widely known to be mineralized.

Fred Hewett, vice-president of the Northair Group, said the region and its geology lend themselves to techniques commonly employed in British Columbia. “Southern Chile has fantastic geologic potential and is very reminiscent of British Columbia in the fifties,” Hewett said, adding that the region is being opened up by a new highway and a newly active logging industry. Since the inception of the company, over 130 sites have been identified and at least nine properties staked — four epithermal gold targets, three disseminated copper targets and two stratabound base metal targets. Arauco has started its second field season, and ground is still being acquired.