Nov 17 2014
TriMetals Mining Inc. is pleased to announced that its wholly-owned Chilean subsidiary, South American Silver Chile SCM, has been granted an environmental permit to construct 20 drill pads from which 20,000 metres of diamond drilling can be performed. The permit authorizes work to be completed over 3 drilling seasons, which typically extend from October to May.
Ralph Fitch, CEO said: "The issuance of the environmental permit provides another key ingredient for us to seek a partner on this very large project located in a safe, mining friendly jurisdiction with a long mining history. Now, any incoming partner will be able to immediately move to drilling. The target being the potentially significant down-dip and northern extension of the magnetic anomaly associated with the high-grade copper-gold skarn mineralization which forms part of this porphyry copper deposit. Drill testing these areas could significantly expand the footprint of the presently known mineralization."
The Escalones copper-gold project is located in the world-class central Chilean mining district, 35 km East of El Teniente - the world's largest underground copper mine and owned by CODELCO. The project is accessible by road and is approximately 100 kilometres south-east of Santiago.
Escalones hosts a four-square-kilometer area of hydrothermal alteration with coincident geophysical anomalies and additional skarn type geophysical targets extending several kilometres beyond this area. The significant copper-gold mineralization hosted in both skarn and porphyry discovered to date, which comprises the present resource remains open to further expansion laterally and at depth.
The Escalones Resource:
On August 12, 2013, the Company filed a NI 43-101 Technical Report (Amended on July 11, 2014) which included an updated resource estimate for Escalones (See News Releases 13-13 dated June 28, 2013 and 13-17 dated August 12, 2013). The updated resource showed a significant increase in copper, molybdenum and gold resources as well as a category upgrade of approximately a third of the resource to Indicated from Inferred. The updated resource estimate is as follows (note that Indicated resource is in addition to the Inferred resource):
- An Indicated resource of 232.6 million tonnes of mineralized material containing 1.6 billion lbs. of copper, 498,012 oz. of gold, 4.9 million oz. of silver and 31.9 million lbs. of molybdenum, at a grade of 0.31% copper, 0.07 g/t gold, 0.66 g/t silver and 0.006% molybdenum using a 0.25% Cu Equivalent cut-off grade. This is a copper-equivalent* content of 1.9 billion lbs. of copper grading 0.38%.
- An Inferred resource of 527.7 million tonnes of mineralized material containing 4.0 billion lbs. of copper, 609,437 oz. of gold, 14.4 million oz. of silver and 79.5 million lbs. of molybdenum at a grade of 0.34% copper, 0.04 g/t gold, 0.85 g/t silver and 0.007% molybdenum using a 0.25% Cu Equivalent cut-off grade. This is a copper-equivalent* content of 4.7 billion lbs. of copper grading 0.40%.
The Escalones mineral resource estimate is based on 53 diamond drill holes (24,939 meters) and 15,880 associated assay values collected through June 28, 2013. The resource estimate is categorized as indicated and inferred as defined by the CIM guidelines for resource reporting. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any part of the mineral resources will be converted into mineral reserves after economic considerations are applied. The indicated and inferred mineral resource estimates have been prepared in compliance with the standards of NI 43-101 by Jeffrey Choquette and Jennifer J. Brown, both of Hard Rock Consulting, LLC, who are both "qualified persons" as defined in NI 43-101 and "independent" of the Company as defined in NI 43-101. David Dreisinger, also a qualified person, authored the portions of the Technical Report regarding mineral processing and metallurgical testing.