Francisco drills Marlin project

Assay results for the final six drill holes of an 18-hole program completed in December 2001 continue to expand a gold-silver target at Francisco Gold‘s (FGX-V) Marlin project in western Guatemala.

Since mid-2000, Francisco has drilled 72 core holes (including two twin holes), or 7,600 metres, at the potenially open-pit deposit. The Main zone has been tested by 63 holes, along with extensive surface trenching and geophysical surveys. In the latest batch of drill results, hole 65, the most southwesterly hole drilled to date, intercepted an 83-metre interval averaging 1.24 grams gold and 14.9 grams silver per tonne at a down-hole depth of 92-175 metres. The hole intersected a high-grade shoot at the top of the intercept grading 99.2 grams gold and 1,730 grams silver over 1.5 metres. (The bonanza-grade interval was cut to 10 grams gold and 100 grams silver.)

Hole 65 extended the Main zone by another 50 metres and now measures 700 metres long and up to 225 metres wide, with an average thickness of 65 metres. A coincident induced-polarization anomaly extends another 400 metres past hole 65. Francisco will continue to step out on the southwestern extension of the Main zone when drilling resumes in the weeks ahead.

Three of the latest holes, 66, 67 and 68, tested the east-northeastern end of the Main zone. Results included:

– 40 metres of 1.72 grams gold and 25.8 grams silver in hole 66;

– 18 metres of 0.9 gram gold and 6.9 grams silver in hole 67; and

– 14 metres of 0.44 gram gold and 1.7 grams silver in hole 68.

The Main zone consists of a gently west-plunging, near-surface system of mineralization that is associated with multiple south-dipping thrust faults and a sub-vertical feeder fault partially bounding it to the south. Several contrasting styles of gold mineralization are evident. In the upper parts of the system, high gold and silver values occur in two settings: thick, quartz vein fragment-rich tectonic breccias forming moderately to shallowly south-dipping tabular bodies; and stockwork vein systems in Marlin complex rocks lying between breccia bodies.

In lower parts of the system, mineralization occurs in more steeply dipping stockwork zones in the volcaniclastic sequence. At both levels, a central core of strong silicification grades outward into a broad zone of argillic alteration. Oxidation typically extends 50-100 metres below surface. The latest drilling on the southwestern extension is hitting a transitional sulphide zone of mineralization.

A further 1 km to the west and on strike of the Main zone is Ajel, a shallow high-resistivity anomaly that corresponds to a broad area of intense argillic alteration and abundant high-level quartz. Ajel will be tested in the next round of drilling.

The last two holes of the most recent drill program tested the Los Cochis target, 500 metres northwest of the Main zone. Los Cochis is a structural corridor that has been mapped and trenched over a known strike length of 1,100 metres. The two holes tested the downdip extension below trench T-19, which returned 26 metres of 4.4 grams gold-equivalent. At a depth of 38 metres, hole 69 intersected 16 metres averaging 2.77 grams gold and 141.6 grams silver. Hole 70 cut 23 metres of 1.6 grams gold and 2.9 grams silver at a down-hole depth of 93 metres. Francisco intends to drill a fence of holes along the Los Cochis corridor to test the downdip extension of several other trenches that yielded values of up to 9.5 grams gold-equivalent over widths of 2-26 metres.