Ecuador Exploration – Land of Plenty for Lucky Minerals Ecuador Mineral Exploration – A Land of Plenty with Plenty More to Come
With over US$250m raised by exploration companies with projects in Ecuador since 2020, exploration dollars are flowing into the country.
Quito - the capital
Ecuador, a relatively small Spanish speaking country located in northwest South America, has in recent years seen some truly exceptional gold discoveries including the 23.6moz Cascabel Copper-Gold-Silver Project, the 17 Moz Au Cangrejos and Gran Bestia Gold-Copper Projects, the 7.8moz Au Condor Gold-Silver Project and the 3.38 Moz Au Loma Larga Gold-Silver-Copper Project.
These four projects alone contain over 50 million ounces of gold between them and contain an additional 13.2 million tonnes of copper with additional silver.
This highlights just what an exciting jurisdiction Ecuador is for mineral exploration, and given the highly underexplored nature of the ground in Ecuador there could be many more discoveries to come.
With over US$250m raised by exploration companies with projects in Ecuador since 2020, exploration dollars are flowing into the country. Once considered an antimining jurisdiction the current government has set an ambitious plan to boost mining activity to double its current value by 2022.
In this update, we take a look at Lucky Minerals to see what exciting developments we can expect from the company.
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's Fortuna Project covers an area of 550km2 in south central Ecuador. The concessions contain a 22km long section of a Miocene volcanic belt, known as the "Shincata Gold Trend”. The company is focusing its exploration efforts on three main target areas: thee Wayka Epithermal Gold Discovery, Macuche Gold Target and the El Garo Gold Target.
Wayka Epithermal Gold Discovery
Lucky has completed a programme of trenching that demonstrated the presence of significant sections of high- sulfidation epithermal gold mineralisation at surface, including:
- 7 meters at a grade of 8.08 g/t gold, including 3.0 meters at a grade of 17.63 g/t gold (T-6)
- 4 meters at a grade of 3.06 g/t gold (T-1)
- 10 meters at a grade of 0.38 g/t gold (T-5)
Trench 1 is located over 700 meters to the southeast of both Trenches 5 and 6 and gold bearing grab samples, with grades up to 2.9g/t (262670), have been collected c. 800 meters to the north of Trenches 5 and 6. With surficial gold mineralisation now established over a strike length of 1,500 m Lucky’s exploration team is focused on geological mapping and sampling to further increase its understanding of the mineralized system. This work is expected to be followed-up by ground-based magnetics, leading to a maiden scout drilling programme in the coming months.
Macuche Gold Target
At the Macuche Gold Target Lucky has defined the presence of gold mineralisation within quartz-pyrite stockwork type veinlets with grab sampling has returning:
- 2.19 g/t gold (261598)
- 1.98 g/t gold (262652)
- 1.66 g/t gold (261057)
A 20-meter-long trench completed at the target returned an average of 0.33 g/t gold, showed the presence of a large stockwork system and a potential for bulk tonnage gold target. The mineralisation in the trench remains open both to the east and to the west. Lucky is now focusing on mapping and sampling to understand both the scale and controls on the veining.
El Garo Gold Target
The El Garo Gold Target is located 8km to the north of the Wayka Discovery. El Garo contains a large area of advanced argillic alteration measuring approximately 2 km by 1 km that is open in all directions. The company is currently completing a soil sampling programme over an area of about 4.4 km by 2 km. Results from this programme will be combined with a programme of trenching and geophysics.