Mineweb article on Atico Rich thick copper-gold VMS underground drill intercepts in Colombia
Canadian exploration junior, Atico Mining, is off to a good start in its underground drill program at El Roble in Colombia, hitting two 40-metre intercepts with high-grade copper and gold.
Author: Kip Keen
Posted: Thursday , 19 Jul 2012
HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) -
It was asking to be drilled. Last year Atico Mining (TSX-V: ATY) identified a gap in what little exploration had been done just beneath active mining operations (not its own) at the El Roble copper-gold mine in Colombia on which it has an option. It was the most obvious target to drill, a few hundred metres of strike, just a hundred or so metres beneath active operations in copper-gold mineralized lenses of a volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit in Colombia.
"Note that the area between the 2000m and 1900m levels has been incompletely tested for additional massive sulphide lenses," wrote consulting geologists Greg Smith and Demetrius Pohl in a 2012 report commissioned by Atico.
Atico could see no reason why the VMS deposit wouldn't keep on going at depth, extending from a series of VMS lenses that had been mined over the past couple decades (1.5 million tonnes @ 2.53 percent copper since 1990).
Now Atico can say it does.
Atico drilled the gap and today released drilling results from four drillholes. Two showed 40-odd metre long intercepts with high-grade copper and, in one of them, high-grade gold mineralization. The standout intercepts were about 50 metres apart, on strike: 41 metres @ 6.49 percent copper, 17.57 g/t gold and 13.26 g/t silver; and 41 meters @ 6.54 percent copper, 1.82 g/t gold and 8.22 g/t silver. Both intercepts started about 100-metres downhole and showed that the VMS deposit continues at depth just beneath active mining areas.
On news of the drilling Atico's shareprice surged, up 65 percent to C
.66 as of presstime.
The burning question for Atico is whether it can find enough mineralization, or a strong indication thereof, both in the VMS deposit beneath the El Roble mine and at other VMS targets beyond to justify exercising its option on the property. It inked the option with Minera El Roble, the owner of the 380-tonne-per-day El Roble copper-gold mine, back in late January, 2011, and the terms give Atico two years, with the right to one-year extension, to explore the El Roble property, including near-mine areas. After the two years are up, Atico owes Minera El Roble $14 million if it wants 90-percent ownership.
That deadline - January 2013 - is fast approaching, though Atico does have some breathing room. For $1.2 million it can get a year extension to the option period, pushing to early 2014 the date by which Atico must make up its mind whether to buy El Roble. For Atico this decision will depend on the ongoing underground drill program - to comprise 16 drillholes, four of which are now in - and exploration beyond the El Roble mine, where Atico has pinpointed striking targets that could host more VMS deposits through geophysics. Still, in the pursuit to prove there's a reason to own El Roble, Atico could hardly have asked for a better start.