from Mining Marketshttps://www.miningmarkets.ca/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000362558&type=Print%20Archives
Antioquia Gold (AGD-V)
Along with other Colombian gold plays, Antioquia Gold enjoyed a healthy lift in its share price in the latter half of 2009.
Investors eagerly awaited drill results from the first-ever drill program at its Cisneros gold project -- a target well known to local artisanal miners, but hitherto untouched by modern drills.
The 30-hole program wrapped up in the middle of December, but when results from the first 21 holes were released, the market yawned.
Perhaps spoiled by the sort of bonanza grades that Ventana turned in last year from its La Bodega property -- which included 84 metres of 13.66 grams gold per tonne -- Antioquia's highlight, near-surface intercept of 6.9 metres grading 15.73 grams gold per tonne failed to provide the sort of lift that an exploration company would normally expect.
For its part, Antioquia was pleased with the results, as they confirmed a geological hypothesis that lower-grade clusters of veinlets occur over thick widths between narrower, higher-grade veins.
More results released in late January further verified the potential of the project, 70 km northeast of Medellin.
Assays from the final nine holes of the drill program included an 11.7-metre interval of 22.56 grams gold and an 8.3-metre section of 5.56 grams gold.
Those kinds of results have raised management's confidence in the company's geological model, and chairman Jim Decker says a major fundraising planned in March will further test its model.
The junior has about $3.5 million in its treasury. It last went to the market in November, raising $1.78 million by issuing 7.1 million units at 25¢ apiece.
When completed, Decker says the financing will leave Antioquia with enough money to not only unleash more drills on Cisneros -- it has a 10,000-metre program planned for 2010 -- but to also begin poking around at its newer permits.
In October last year, Antioquia acquired Ingenieria y Gestion del Territorio (IGTER) -- a Medellin-based company with a large swath of prospective ground in Colombia.
Through the acquisition, which cost it $300,000 in cash and 2 million shares, Antioquia inherited a previous agreement between IGTER and an undisclosed multinational mining company. The two were partnered on several land packages covering 1,000 sq. km, including grass-roots properties near Marmato, La Colosa, and B2Gold (BTO-T) and AngloGold's Gramalote joint venture.
Antioquia's yet-to-be named multinational partner has the right to earn a 60% interest in ground explored by the junior by paying it a premium on its exploration costs and other discovery charges on a per-ounce basis.
But whatever tantalizing prospects such exploration yields, Antioquia's primary focus is to recapture the market's attention as it develops a resource at Cisneros.