Source Exploration’s (SOP-V) past-producing San Acacio deposit in central Mexico, just 5 km northeast of Capstone Mining’s (CS-T) Cozamin copper mine, has an indicated resource of 1.49 million tonnes at an average grade of 84.9 grams silver per tonne and 0.19 gram gold per tonne for 4.05 million oz. contained silver and 9,000 oz. gold.
In addition, an inferred resource was calculated to be 3.44 million tonnes at an average grade of 80 grams silver and 0.16 gram gold for contained silver of 8.84 million oz. and 17,400 oz. gold. The base case for the resource estimate used a silver equivalent cutoff grade of 45 grams per tonne.
San Acacio lies within the Veta Grande mining camp, about 10 km northeast of the city of Zacatecas and 1 km southeast of the town of Veta Grande. (Zacatecas is 680 km south of the U.S. border in Texas and 540 km northwest of Mexico City.)
The property covers the southeastern half of the Veta Grande vein system and a number of other parallel, steeply dipping polymetallic epithermal veins in the San Acacio underground mine. According to the company’s 2008 technical report on the deposit, the Veta Grande vein is the most prolific of four subparallel vein systems that run through the Zacatecas mining district.
Workings at San Acacio extend to a vertical depth of 335 metres and about 7 km along strike.
Source’s management believes there is potential to expand the near-surface resource amenable to open-pit mining and the deeper resource for underground mining and says an underground drill program is underway to potentially extend to depth the high-grade mineralized shoots mined from the historical stopes.
Drilling has intersected the Veta Grande vein system at a depth of 161 metres below the lowest operating level of the mine. And Source’s underground program is targeting areas below historical high-grade oxide stopes, Brian Robertson, the company’s president and chief executive, noted in a press release.
Over the last two decades, a number of historical estimates have been prepared for San Acacio, the most recent in 1995 by Silver Standard (SSO-T, SSRI-Q), which calculated that the project contained 2.47 million tonnes grading 182.4 grams silver, or roughly 14.5 million oz. silver, above a vertical depth of 100 metres.
After optioning the property in late 1994, Silver Standard in 1995 completed 32 diamond drill holes from surface totaling 4,060 metres. In 1996, a structural geological review was undertaken, but Silver Standard relinquished the property in 1997 due to other priorities.
Source Exploration acquired the property late in 2006 from Sterling Mining of Mexico.
The database used for Source’s current National Instrument 43- 101 compliant resource contains 8,147 metres of diamond drill holes supplemented by 457 underground chip samples. Trench data was available but not used in the estimation. Data was sourced from the 1997 Silver Standard exploration program, 2004-2006 Sterling Mining and more recent work by Source Exploration in 2009- 2010.
The Zacatecas silver belt is one of the most prolific silver-producing areas in the world, hosting the Fresnillo and Zacatecas silver mines that together have churned out more than 1.5 billion oz. silver.
The resource estimate pushed the Vancouver-based junior’s stock up by 1.5¢ or 8.57% to close at 19¢ per share.
With 23.8 million shares outstanding, the company has traded in a 52-week range of 8¢-40¢ per share.
Be the first to comment on "Source posts maiden resource for San Acacio"