Feb 2 2017
Cordoba Minerals Corp. ("Cordoba" or the "Company") and its joint-venture partner, High Power Exploration Inc. ("HPX"), a private mineral exploration company indirectly controlled by mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland's Ivanhoe Industries, LLC, are pleased to announce that Major Drilling International Inc. ("Major Drilling") has been engaged to expand Cordoba's exploration program providing a more powerful drill rig that will allow for the drill testing of deeper targets at the San Matias Copper-Gold Project in Colombia.
The first two Major Drilling rigs are being mobilized to site and drilling is expected to begin next week. Additional rigs are expected to be mobilized to site in the near future.
Following Cordoba's news release on January 23, 2017, announcing the discovery of bonanza-grade gold veins at Alacran where hole ACD036 intersected 0.9 metres of 4,440 g/t gold, 10.25% copper, 24.7% zinc and 347 g/t silver, drilling at Alacran will be focused on testing the extent of the newly discovered, bonanza-grade, structurally controlled, Carbonate Base Metal (CBM) veins, and the up-dip eastern extensions of the Alacran deposit where hole ACD033 intersected 108 metres of 1.26% copper and 0.87 g/t gold and the down dip extensions on the western side.
Mario Stifano, President and CEO of Cordoba, commented: "We look forward to restarting our aggressive drilling program at our highly prospective San Matias Copper-Gold Project, which will focus on expanding the size and scope of mineralization at Alacran, as well as testing other high priority targets at San Matias that have previously yielded large widths of high-grade copper-gold mineralization."
Based in New Brunswick, Canada, Major Drilling is one of the world's largest metals and minerals contract drilling services companies and who have a significant presence in Colombia.
Alacran Copper-Gold System
The Alacran copper-gold system is located within the San Matias Copper-Gold Project in the Department of Cordoba, Colombia. The San Matias Copper-Gold Project comprises a 20,000-hectare land package on the inferred northern extension of the richly endowed Mid-Cauca Belt in Colombia. The project contains several known areas of porphyry copper-gold mineralization, copper-gold skarn mineralization and vein-hosted, gold-copper mineralization.
The Alacran system is located on a topographic high in gently rolling topography, optimal for potential open-pit mining. Access and infrastructure are considered favourable. Initial inferred resources at Alacran are 53.5 million tonnes of 0.70% copper and 0.37 g/t gold. Alacran is approximately two kilometres southwest of the Company's Montiel porphyry copper-gold discovery, where drilling interested 101 metres of 1.0% copper and 0.65 g/t gold, and two kilometers northwest of the Costa Azul porphyry copper-gold discovery, where drilling interested 87 metres of 0.62% copper and 0.51 g/t gold (Figure 1). The copper-gold mineralization at Alacran is associated with stratabound replacement of a marine volcano-sedimentary sequence in the core of a faulted antiformal fold structure. The deposit comprises moderately to steeply-dipping stratigraphy that is mineralized as a series of sub-parallel replacement-style zones and associated disseminations. The copper-gold mineralization is composed of multiple overprinting hydrothermal events with the main ore phase comprised of chalcopyrite-pyrrhotite-pyrite that appears to overprint an early magnetite metasomatic event.
Joint Venture Agreement
The San Matias Project is a joint venture between Cordoba and HPX. HPX has earned a 51% interest in the San Matias Project by spending a cumulative total of C$19 million on exploration expenditures on the project. Cordoba and HPX have entered Phase Three of their Joint Venture Agreement, whereby HPX can earn a 65% interest in the project by completing a Feasibility Study.