LATIN AMERICA — Minera Andes adds to Argentine holdings — More drilling planned for Pino Andino prospect

Minera Andes (MAI-A) has acuired four contiguous gold prospects totalling 7,200 ha in Argentina’s Mendoza province.

The properties, collectively known as the Reyunos project, lie east of the company’s La Horqueta copper porphyry prospect and about 50 km west of the town of San Rafael.

Minera Andes notes that Los Reyunos’ relatively low elevation (1,000 to 1,500 metres above sea level) and good roads enable year-round access to the project.

The properties are underlain by rocks of the San Rafael terrane. Precambrian metasediments and carboniferous clastic sediments are intruded by stocks, domes and dykes of later dacite porphyry. On the central property, gold-bearing silver pyrite zones have been identified within northwesterly trending fault zones near dacite porphyry plugs. Preliminary sampling has returned anomalous gold associated with arsenic.

Work at Los Reyunos will include additional reconnaissance exploration, as well as geological mapping and sampling.

Minera Andes also reports that Cominco (CLT-T) has returned the Pino Andino gold prospect, thus ending a year-old exploration joint venture. A 12-hole drill program conducted by the company did not outline copper mineralization sufficient for a bulk-mining, open-pit operation.

Cominco is still exploring Minera Andes’ Santa Clara property in Argentina’s Mendoza province. That work is testing a 1.5-by-2-km porphyry target containing leached outcrops and intense stockwork mineralization characterized by anomalous copper and molybdenum.

The major can earn up to a 51% interest there by spending US$4.7 million on exploration over four years.

Minera Andes has not given up on Pino Andino and will explore and delineate a zone of disseminated gold mineralization encountered during a reconnaissance drilling program it conducted in late 1995. Results from that program returned 1.5 metres of 1.37 grams gold per tonne and 16.7 metres of 1.2 grams gold. The company may still seek a new joint-Venture partner.

Minera Andes currently holds 35 mineral properties in Argentina, primarily in the Andean Cordillera. Gold, copper and silver are the main exploration targets. Of these, the Agua Blanca gold-copper prospect in San Juan province was recently drilled by Newcrest Resources, which elected to return the property to Minera Andes. The drilling returned relatively low gold and copper values, with one of the better holes returning 146 metres of 0.49 gram gold and 0.19% copper.