Eldorado resource on Bolcana estimates 6.5M ounces of gold

A maiden resource estimate on Eldorado Gold’s (TSX: ELD; NYSE: EGO) Bolcana copper-gold project in Romania, about six kilometres from the company’s Certej project, has delivered 6.5 million inferred ounces of gold.

The inferred resource of 381 million tonnes grading 0.53 gram gold per tonne and 0.18% copper for 6.5 million ounces of contained gold and 686,000 tonnes of copper is based on 98 diamond drill holes Eldorado completed mainly in 2017 and 2018 and a further 17 drill holes by European Goldfields between 2002 and 2004.

The resource on the gold-copper porphyry project was based on an open pit and an underground component, with the open pit portion containing just over half the total. The pit portion was constrained by a conceptual pit design with an average depth of about 720 metres and all the resources outside the pit shell were classified as underground mineralized material.

Nine samples tested with preliminary rougher flotation demonstrated recoveries of up to 90% of copper and 86% for gold.

Bolcana’s porphyry system includes three shallow mineralized zones (North, Central and South), over a strike extent of more than one kilometre, which coalesce at depth into a north-plunging high-grade mineralized core.

The Romanian government explored the porphyry deposit in the 1970s and 1980s. European Goldfields, Eldorado Gold’s Romanian subsidiary, then undertook detailed exploration in the upper 200 metres of the porphyry by drilling and resampling of five levels of underground workings between 2002 and 2004.

Early exploration found a surface footprint of phyllic and argillic alteration of about 2 km by 1 km with localized potassic alteration and stockwork vein networks.

In 2002 drilling returned a 208-metre intercept starting from 10 metres downhole grading 0.99 gram gold and 0.32% copper. A geophysical signature consisted of an 850-metre by 500-metre magnetic anomaly coincident with a high chargability zone.

Drilling by Eldorado in 2013 and in 2015 on the company’s Certej North exploration licence, which abuts Bolcana to the north, intersected porphyry style mineralization (181 metres of 0.40 gram gold and 0.25% copper), which was interpreted as representing the northern edge of the Bolcana porphyry. The drilling also found zones of disseminated epithermal mineralization, with a 76-metre intercept grading 0.37 gram gold.

Over the last year, the company has traded within a 52-week range of 78¢ per share and $1.85. At press time in Toronto, Eldorado’s shares were trading at 78¢.

The company has about 794 million shares outstanding for a market cap of 619 million shares.