Although recent drilling at San Anton Resources’ (SNN-T, SNTRF-O) first regional target on its silver-gold property in Guanajuato state, Mexico, did not reach the Carmen vein system as planned, the company was satisfied with the drill results.
One of the best results for the Empilazada target was 3.1 metres grading 200 grams silver per tonne and 1.05 grams gold.
The results came from four holes totalling 745 metres of reverse-circulation drilling at Empilazada.
Empalizada is one of more than 25 regional targets on the 200-sq.-km property. It’s located along the 3-km Carmen-Providencia vein system and is 2 km west of the main Cerro del Gallo deposit on the San Anton property, 270 km northwest of Mexico City.
Cerro de Gallo has an estimated resource of 4 million oz. gold, 171 million oz. silver and 448,000 tonnes of copper.
The goal was to intersect the Carmen vein system but the drillers were forced to stop short when they hit a fault zone.
“There was just too much water coming into the hole, so we had to stop drilling,” says Gregory Bowes, San Anton president and CEO.
The company will use a bigger capacity drill rig with a larger compressor to avoid this problem in future.
“Otherwise we’ll drill it using a core rig,” Bowes says.
Based on the first set of results, Bowes says the Carmen-Providencia vein system may be up to 100 metres wide with rock textures that suggest it’s at the upper levels of a large hydrothermal system.
San Anton is awaiting drill results from two other targets, one 2 km southwest of Cerro del Gallo and the other 1.5 km northeast. The company will soon receive results of geochemical sampling from a target 5 km south of the main deposit.
The company has a 51% stake in the property, with Goldcorp (G-T, GG-N) holding 49%. Since San Anton joined the joint venture in 2004, drilling has been focused on Cerro del Gallo — until now.
“It’s a big property — we’re looking for other discoveries on the property,” Bowes says.
Although Cerro del Gallo is an intrusive system, Emplizada is an epithermal vein system.
Even so, 40,000 metres of this year’s planned 50,000-metre drill program will be done at Cerro del Gallo. The company is trying to boost the latest resource estimate, which came out in March.
“The question is how much bigger can we make it,” Bowes says.
The deposit is open in a number of directions.
The resource estimate was prepared assuming bulk mining and both conventional flotation leaching using a 0.3-gram gold cutoff grade and carbon-in-leach, using a 0.4-gram gold-only cutoff.
The property is located in the San Anton mining district, where locals say mining dates back to the 1700s. No production records exist, though shafts, adits, pits and other superficial workings remain along the three main structural trends near Cerro del Gallo.
San Anton shares rose about 10% in Toronto on the results to $1.72 apiece on a trading volume of about 99,000 shares.
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