Aurelian kicks of drill program at Condor

Vancouver — Aurelian Resources (ARU-V) has commenced a 1,500 metre drill program at its wholly-owned Condor gold project in southeastern Ecuador.

The program is designed to test the vertical extent of mineralization found at the Aguas Mesas Sur and Aguas Mesas Norte prospects. The drill will then be mobilized to the Las Penas and Bonza prospects to infill previously drilled holes by Climax Mining in 1997.

The first hole is now turning at the Aguas Mesas Sur #3 pit, which represents the southern most prospect, on Aurelian’s La Zarza concession. Previously released chip samples from the pit returned a true width of about 6.8 metres averaging 71.98 grams gold per tonne as well as 2.8 metres averaging 63.5 grams gold, and 2.9 metres averaging 92.03 grams gold. These results represent a series of continuous channel samples taken across a milky white to translucent light-grey fractured and partly brecciated quartz vein exposed in an artesanal mine cut. The samples were taken at intervals from near surface to a depth of approximately 20 metres.

The Aguas Mesas Norte prospect, lies about one km to the north. Here, the drill will test the vertical extent of a sub-vertical quartz vein and quartz breccia zone. This vein zone is exposed continuously for 95 metres and has been the focus of an artesanal mining operation. Aurelian has traced the vein laterally through trenching for about 450 metres. Trench results from the northernmost end of the 95-metre exposure returned 9.40 metres averaging 6.15 grams gold.

About 3 km further north at the Las Penas and Bonza prospects, Aurelian plans to perform an infill drilling campaign to testing a portion of a gold in soils geochemical anomaly. This anomaly measures 2 by 1 km. A previous hole cut 115 metres averaging 1.58 grams gold per tonne.