Expectations high for Batero in Colombia

Batero Gold’s (BAT-V) impressive market run over the last 12 months has hit a bit of a snag. Shares fell as much as 28% after the company released more drill results from its Batero-Quinchia gold-copper project in Colombia on July 27. At presstime, however, they had slightly recovered and were trading for $2.78.

While the company labeled the results “strong,” clearly the market was expecting something more than highlight intercepts of 31.3 metres grading 2.85 grams gold and 0.03% copper; 23.3 metres grading 3.73 grams gold and 0.02% copper or even 43 metres grading 0.7 gram gold and 0.08% copper.

Those assays may be the envy of some other juniors, but it is a testament to the market fervour that was whipped up around the Batero-Quinchia asset that these would cause such a precipitous
drop.

Batero-Quinchia sits in Colombia’s Risaralda Department. Anticipation around the project really began to heat up last
February when the company released highlight assays from the project of 592 metres grading 0.72 gram gold and 0.13% copper and 399 metres grading 0.46 gram gold and 0.09 % copper.

Such results helped drive the company’s share price up to a 52-week high of $6.30 on March 4.

And while the latest results may not have grabbed the market’s imagination the way past results have, the company is still buoyed by the fact that this most-recent drill program led it to discover three new zones of mineralization and extend the La Cumbre porphyry zone.

The latest assays came from 16 holes for 6,800 metres. On July 23 Batero announced it had finished the 40,000 metres of drilling called for in phases one and two of drilling and that it would enter into a third phase of 12,500 metres.

The third phase will have five drills testing and filling-in the remaining untested areas from the Matecana zone in the south all the way to La Cumbre, Manzanillo, La Lenguita, and Dos Quebradas in the north.

Results from the latest round of drilling will go into its first published National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource estimate, due by year-end.

Batero says that all mineralized zones encountered to date are part of a large, regional mineralizing system that covers more than 3 sq. km.

The core of mineralization extends over 2 km from La Cumbre through to the El Centro zone, which is made up of the Manzanillo, La Lenguita, and El Cedral targets.

And with its new discovery at Matecana, roughly 800 metres southeast of La Cumbre, the north-to-south strike length could wind up being extended to nearly 3 km.