Thick, Copper-Rich Intercepts For Sunridge At Debarwa

Sunridge Gold’s (SGC-V) latest results from Eritrea show the company to be off to a stellar start on its 2009 drill campaign.

The company announced results from this year’s first four diamond-drill holes and three of the holes returned eye-catching results.

Highlights included: Hole DEBD- 092 — 36.7 metres grading 4.82% copper and 1.12 grams gold, including 15.7 metres grading 10.21% copper and 2.01 grams gold; hole 94 — 26.2 metres grading 3.77% copper, including 14.2 metres grading 6.26% copper: and hole 93 — 24 metres grading 1.13% copper.

Sunridge estimates that true thickness is roughly 90% of those intervals.

The results come from the Vancouver- based company’s wholly owned Debarwa project, which it describes as a high-grade copper-gold- zinc volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit.

With the latest drill program, a total of 35 holes have now been pushed through the rock to expand the copper-rich supergene and primary zones.

The main purpose of the program is to expand the existing resources by testing nearby geophysical anomalies and extending the supergene zone to the south and the primary zone to depth.

The VMS deposit sits 25 km south of the capital city of Asmara and currently has an indicated resource of 4.4 million tonnes broken up between three zones: supergene, primary and oxide.

The supergene zone has 1.3 million tonnes grading 5.36% copper, 1.54 grams gold and 33.87 grams silver for 158 million lbs. of copper. The latest drill results brought back wider than predicted intercepts from hole 92 and also extended the copper zone by 20 metres downdip.

The primary zone currently has 700,000 tonnes in the indicated category grading 2.53% copper, 0.87 gram gold, 22.31 grams silver and 3.23% zinc for 39 million lbs. of copper and 50 million lbs. of zinc. Sunridge says the zone is yet to be as clearly delineated as the supergene zone and is open for expansion at depth and along strike.

The oxide zone has 2.4 million tonnes of ore grading 0.12% copper, 1.71 grams gold and 13.79 grams silver.

Two holes were also drilled away from the main zone, roughly 400 metres south at the Debarwa South zone. The drill rigs were looking to extend the zone downdip and successfully hit high-grade mineralization in holes 93 and 94.

Debarwa is part of the larger Asmara project, which covers 925 sq. km in central Eritrea, extending to the north, south and west of the capital city of Asmara.

To help it deal with the scale of the overall project, the company recently announced an exploration and funding agreement with the major copper producer Santiago, Chile-based Antofagasta Minerals (ANTO-L).

The deal calls for Antofagasta to fund US$10-million worth of exploration over five years for specific parts of Asmara. That will allow it to earn up to a 75% interest in those areas.

Sunridge has roughly 76 million shares outstanding and $8.3 million in its kitty.