Atacama gets more ground around Cerro Maricunga

Atacama Pacific Gold (ATM-V) is looking to expand its position in the dry lands of Chile.

The company’s flagship property, the Cerro Maricunga Gold Project, sits in the country’s Maricunga mineral belt and is roughly 20-km south of Kinross Gold’s (K-T, KGC-N) La Copia silver-gold mine and 30-km northwest of its Lobo Marte project.

Cerro Maricunga hosts an indicated resource of 93 million tonnes grading 0.54 grams gold for 1.6 million oz. In the inferred category the company has another 117 million tonne grading 0.52 grams gold for 1.95 million oz.

That tonnage comes from three main zones, Lynx, Phoenix and crux, and all mineralization is oxide-associated and breccia-hosted, which should make for easier and cheaper processing should the project become a mine.

Such prospectiveness led the company to extend its reach in the area, is it announced an agreement to acquire the Santa Teresa gold property which lies within the boundaries of Cerro Maricunga.

To get the ground Atacama will pay the vendor $3 million over three years and a net smelter royalty of 1.5%. Atacama can buy back 50% of the royalty for $1 million.

While it is closing that deal it will be looking to gain additional concessions to the northwest of Cerro Maricunga through an application process.

Cerro Maricunga, which sits 140-km by road east of the city of Copiapo, currently stretches out over 158.4 sq km.

As for the latest Santa Teresa acquisition, the company says the property covers a series of dacitic and andesitic stocks intruding volcanic and sedimentary rocks similar to those formations and lithologies at La Copia mine.

A preliminary look at the ground by Atacama showed areas of black banded quartz veining which returned assays from trace to 0.49 grams per tonne gold over 2 metres.

It was also allowed to do a channel sample which cut across a 0.30 metre iron carbonate quartz vein and returned 4.20 grams gold per tonne.

The company says the iron carbonate quartz vein is associated with a major fault cutting a thin veneer of limestone overlying volcanic and sedimentary rocks.

While Cominco did some preliminary exploration at Santa Teresa in the late 1990s, the work was limited to a geophysical study and no drilling was done.

The company plans to spend $24 million on its third phase of exploration at Cerro Maricunga, and part of those funds will flow into mapping, trenching and sampling at Santa Teresa with the goal of defining targets for drilling during the second quarter of 2012.