Drill turns at Alto Rico (May 30, 2003)

Vancouver Tenke Mining (TNK-T) has launched a 1,300 metre drill program over the promising Alto Rico gold project in Argentina.

The 7-hole program will test a 2-by-3 km coincidental geochemical and geophysical anomaly known as the Alto Rico stockwork zone.

The 25-sq-km property lies in the Argentine portion of Patagonia and hosts both veins and stockwork systems containing gold and trace element anomalies in silicified zones. The Alto Rico vein system has been traced for more than 12 km. It consists of five principal sub-parallel veins that trend to the northeast. The veins vary between 1 and 10 metres in width and have an average outcrop width of 3 metres. They converge on a hill that shows signs of extensive stockwork, silicification, acid leaching and argillic alteration.

Over the central part of the zone, assay values range from 0.35 to 4.5 grams gold per tonne in veins and up to 2 grams gold in stockwork. Surface grab samples over the area have returned up to 39.7 grams gold. Mercury anomalies range from 5,400 to 26,500 parts per billion, whereas arsenic ranges from 180 to 951 parts per million and antimony ranges from 29 to 117 parts per billion.

Mineralization is hosted in permeable dacitic-to-andesitic tuffaceous rocks and exhibits banded textures with open-space fillings. Other features, such as bladed calcite replaced by quartz, suggest conditions near the top of an epithermal system above the boiling zone — a level at which pressure and temperature conditions favour precious metal precipitation.