Staccato cuts South Eureka high-grade

Vancouver — Drilling by Staccato Gold Resources (CAT-V, STCGF-O) on the Lookout area of its South Eureka property, located on the southern end of Nevada’s Battle Mountain-Cortez trend, has delivered both high-grade narrow and wider mineralized gold intercepts.

Hole BH-05-03 returned a 0.9-metre interval (from 59 metres down-hole) grading 77.1 grams gold per tonne, followed by a deeper 24-metre intercept (from 116 metres) of 7.4 grams gold.

The three holes in the 900-metre drill program were spotted to test both oxide and sulphide zones beneath and around the past-producing Lookout pit, parallel to and east of the northwest-southeast trending Ratto Ridge fault. Holes 1 (results pending) and 2 sampled beneath the pit, while hole 3 tested an area beyond the pit.

Results indicate characteristics of stratabound mineralization related to collapse breccia structures in the Lower Plate rocks. Gold-enriched zones contain elevated amounts of arsenic sulphides (orpiment and realgar), pyrite and carbon. The Carlin-style environment exhibits anomalous arsenic, antimony, mercury, thallium and zinc geochemistry.

Staccato’s next round of drilling will test prospective host stratigraphy nearer to the Ratto Ridge fault and other potential feeder structures.

An early-2005 resource estimate on the Lookout Mountain area, conducted by Mine Development Associates, reviewed almost 12 million tonnes of measured and indicated resource grading 0.7 gram gold per tonne (about 270,000 oz. gold). An additional 8.4 million tonnes averaging 0.65 gram gold (about 177,000 oz.) was calculated as inferred. The study incorporates data from the more than 61,000 metres of previous drilling in over 400 holes. The Lookout deposit remains open to the southeast and at depth. The property also contains a number of other historic open-pit gold producers.

Earlier this year, Staccato boosted the size of its South Eureka project, to over 71 sq. km, through an agreement to acquire Century Gold’s adjacent Hoosac property for 4.8 million shares.

Investors leapt on the issue following the Dec. 19th release, driving up Staccato’s share price almost 85% or 13.5 to close at 29.5 per share on trading volume of almost 4 million shares.