GoldQuest Mining Corp. (TSX VENTURE:GQC)(FRANKFURT:M1W) has announced the start of a Phase II drilling program at its 100% owned La Escandalosa project in the Dominican Republic.
The Company has deployed a rig to the project and planned a program of approximately 30 to 40 holes totalling approximately 2,500 to 3,500 metres. The Phase II program is focused on upgrading the current NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate at La Escandalosa and to test potential extensions along strike to the north and south.
Anna Stylianides, GoldQuest's President and CEO, commented, "Now that all the necessary licenses and permits are in place, we are pleased to be in a position to start the next phase of drilling with the objective of upgrading and expanding on our recent resource estimate. We have had some excellent results from La Escandalosa and are confident that further drilling will continue to show strong mineralization and expand the resource Area. We expect a small number of holes to be completed in December and drilling activity to accelerate from the beginning of January. Assay results will be announced upon their receipt and analysis by the Company."
The present inferred mineral resource at La Escandalosa is 4,862,835 tonnes grading 2.596 g/t gold at a nominal cut-off of 0.3 g/t of gold containing 405,924 ounces of gold and has a strike length of about 600 metres (refer to news release dated November 16, 2010). To date, the number of holes drilled at La Escandalosa is 25 drill holes with a total length of 3,291 metres.
As previously reported, the Company believes that there is exploration potential for the discovery of additional mineralization in structural feeder zones or possibly related to porphyry copper-gold type mineralization. The La Escandalosa property contains stratiform gold mineralization with copper, silver and zinc of intermediate sulfidation epithermal style. Alteration and mineralization has been traced for 2,200 metres from Hondo Valle to La Hilguera.