The DR delivers for Goldquest and Unigold

Dominican Republic-focused explorers Goldquest ­Mining (GQC-V) and Unigold (UGD-V) both announced sizeable stepout gold-copper hits at their nearby properties in the northeast corner of the country near Haiti on July 18.

For Goldquest, the results from hole 92 are the first of many anticipated follow-up holes to its May 16 discovery hit of 231 metres grading 2.4 grams gold at its Romero target.

Vertical hole 92, drilled 25 metres west of discovery hole 90, returned 160 metres grading 4.45 grams gold and 0.95% copper from a 213-metre depth. With an arbitrary top cut of 50 grams gold, the 160-metre interval still comes in at 4.14 grams gold.

Hole 92 also returned an upper intercept of 54 metres grading 0.63 gram gold per tonne and 0.02% copper from 28 metres downhole, and a middle intercept of 24 metres grading 7.5 grams gold and 0.86% copper starting at 120 metres depth.

The hole is similar to the profile of hole 90, with an upper unit of lower grades followed by a deeper unit of higher-grade gold and copper, though thanks to deeper drilling, hole 92 extends known mineralization by 138 metres depth.

Goldquest CEO Julio Espaillat, reached by phone in the Dominican, says the discoveries at Romero have spurred the company to keep drilling. The company has already completed 25-metre stepout holes to the north and south, and is working on 50-metre stepouts from there, or 75 metres from hole 90.

“The potential, in our opinion, is very good,” Espaillat says. “But we have to define it carefully, making sure that we understand what kind of mineralization we are talking about. We want to do it very systematically.”

Espaillat says that so far the Romero discovery is showing a larger and stronger silicification zone than its ­Escandalosa target farther south, with the amount of sulphide, particularly chalcopyrite, much higher.

Goldquest’s Romero discovery sits 500 metres from its field headquarters in the village of Hondo Valle, but Espaillat explains that Goldquest ran an induced-polarization (IP) survey before identifying what is now the Romero anomaly, north of its 400,000 oz. gold Escandalosa deposit.

“I would say it is 100% a geophysical discovery,” Espaillat says. “In the Romero area there are not really outcrops of mineralization, so we were following the IP anomaly.”

Espaillat, who has worked in the Dominican for 20 years with Falconbridge and Globestar, says IP had worked well in the past, and that the IP survey was something he initiated early on when he became CEO last year.

“When I joined the company, I said ‘let’s stop the drilling,’ because we were missing some holes,” ­Espaillat says, “and that’s when I suggested we should do a large IP program.”

The company is planning more ­geophysical work, especially to the north and east where the data is promising. The geophysical anomaly extends 2.5 km from Escandalosa to Romero, while both targets fall within the company’s Las Tres Palmas project near the border with Haiti.

The Palmas project, meanwhile, is located just 40 km southeast of Unigold’s Candelones project on the border with Haiti.  

Unigold made a big discovery on an extension of its Candelones project in January, but the latest results have shown some of the highest grades yet. Hole 28 returned 77 metres grading 3.81 grams gold, 6.16 grams silver, 0.1% copper and 1.09% zinc from 263 metres depth, and included a 15-metre intercept grading 16.36 grams gold from 263 metres, and a 6-metre interval within that carrying 32.69 grams gold.

“The grades on this one have been an absolute pleasure,” Unigold CEO Andrew Cheatle says in a phone interview. “We’ve not hit anything like 15 metres of half an ounce.”

Unigold drilled hole 28 as a 100-metre stepout to the southwest, with the hole sitting 200 metres west of discovery hole 17 returning 109 metres grading 1.70 grams gold from 252 metres depth in January.

Since making its big discovery, Unigold has been drilling 100-metre stepouts in a grid pattern, and has pulled several encouraging gold hits. Other results so far include hole 23 that returned 70 metres grading 2.10 grams gold from 191 metres depth, hole 26 that cut 41 metres grading 1.44 grams gold from 312 metres depth and hole 22A that returned 80 metres averaging 1.6 grams gold.

“It’s rare to stepout at 100 metres and hit the way we are,” Cheatle says of the drilling. “It’s clearly a multi-million ounce play.”

Cheatle notes that the grade-thickness plot correlates to the geophysics, and shows that the deposit is open to the east, west and south. The company has identified mineralization over a 1,000-by-400-metre area on the volcanogenic-epithermal discovery.

Unigold is working through a 12-month, 40,000-metre drill program on the project, and has completed 10,000 metres so far. With three rigs on site, including two brand-new ones, the company is drilling between 60 and 100 metres a day, but Cheatle foresees a ramp up if funding can be secured.

“This project could easily handle six to ten drill rigs now. If I was Goldcorp and had this, I’d be expecting to drill this out with 10 drill rigs, and not wasting metres,” Cheatle says.

As it stands, Unigold has $8 million in the bank after a $10.5-million raise in early March.

Goldquest is also fairly cashed up after a $6.6-million financing in June, and recently started operating a second drill rig at its Romero project. The company had planned 10,000 metres of drilling, but that  number could grow. For now, Espaillat says the company will keep drilling. With both Romero holes ending in mineralization at the limits of the portable drill rigs, Goldquest has also contracted a third rig that can reach 700 metres depth to test the system’s depth.

Goldquest, which saw its share price climb from 5¢ in mid-May to 98¢ before the latest news, climbed a further 22¢, or 22.4% to $1.20, on results from hole 92 with 7.6 million shares traded. The company has 125 million shares outstanding, or 142 million fully diluted.

Unigold, which spiked from 17¢ to a brief high of 48¢ on its January discovery, climbed 7¢, or 20% to 42¢ on the latest news, with 3.7 million shares traded. The company has 209 million shares outstanding, or 256 million fully diluted.