Vancouver Recent drilling is turning up higher grades and boding well for an expansion of the silver-zinc resources at SilverCrest Mines’ (SVL-V) wholly-owned El Zapote project. The property comprises about 4,200 hectares in northern El Salvador and is situated some 20 km from the company’s Concepcion concession in Guatemala and 40 km from the El Ocote project in Honduras.
A feasibility study is being conducted by SRK to enable the company to apply for an exploitation permit by next February. The new drill results will be incorporated into the feasibility study in addition to the already established, NI-43-101 compliant resource on the property.
The El Zapote resources are 77% contained in the main Cerro Colorado III deposit and 23% within the San Casimiro satellite deposit several hundred metres to the north.
Indicated resources are estimated at 2.29 million tonnes grading 163.4 grams silver and 0.13 grams gold per tonne with 1.35% zinc and 0.36% lead for 12 million oz. silver based on a 34 gram silver cut-off grade, and 68 million pounds of zinc contained. Inferred resources total 743,000 tonnes grading 95.8 grams silver and 0.12 gram gold with 1.44% zinc and 0.37% lead for 2.28 million oz. silver and 17.6 million lbs. zinc contained.
The new drilling has verified the high-grade silver caps on both the Cerro Colorado III and San Casimiro deposit, the latter of which is also revealing significant gold zones. What’s more, volcanogenic massive sulphide mineralization has been seen in both deposits.
At Cerro Colorado, higher than expected silver grades were found fairly consistently as compared with those within the current resource estimate. The best of these included a 76 metre wide intercept grading 360 grams silver and 1.09% zinc from surface in hole CC3-04-02. At San Casimiro, the recent drilling found a gold-in-shear zone; with four holes that intersected significant gold grades like 7 metres of 3.54 grams gold and 27.6 metres of 2.13 grams gold in addition to their high silver and zinc grades.SilverCrest President, Scott Drever said that the company is doing the drilling mainly to confirm the resource but also to expand it in some areas. “There are a number of geotechnical holes outside of the pit area, where we also got higher-than-expected results”, he says.
These higher grades may be a result of remobilization and redeposition of mineralization derived from three mineralizing events. “First there was a VMS event that accounts for the zinc with lesser amounts of gold and silver. This was followed by brecciation which is found in the oxide silver caps and which in turn is followed by dioritic intrusive events which emplaced gold in the shear zones,” explained Drever. Results for the remaining holes are pending.
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