While the El Capitan deposit comes with metallurgical challenges, the near-surface, pervasive nature of this deposit, all of which occurs above the regional water table, provides the potential for both a low mining cost and a long life operation. An investment in ECPN represents an investment in a late-stage exploration / early-stage development company with a gold, silver and platinum group metals discovery that has already seen almost 13,000 feet of successful core and reverse circulation drilling within a 200 acre resource block. In addition to developing a better understanding of the metallurgical issues associated with this deposit, the Company is focused on acquiring federal and state permits to conduct sub-surface exploration on a 2,000 acre claim block extending east, west and south of the current resource area. This prospective portion of the El Capitan land package contains a number of attractive targets identified through surface sampling, as well as gravity, magnetic, and hyperspectral remote sensing.
ECPN is executing its strategy for the development of the El Capitan deposit in a manner that is conducive to steady and sustainable share value improvements. ECPN is targeting long-term value investors, and we are specifically avoiding the type of promotional activities that result in unsustainable temporary share price movements that typically attract short-term, trading oriented investors. We believe that our conservative approach to this asset, and to the financial markets, supports our goal of steady and sustainable share value enhancement.
ECPN represents an important precious metals investment opportunity that should be part of the portfolio of the risk tolerant, mid-to-long-term investor looking for leveraged exposure to the precious metals market through a late-stage exploration / early-stage development asset.
The El Capitan deposit has been known as a potential iron ore resource for several decades. The U.S. Bureau of Mines drilled approximately 140 shallow holes through the outcropping, shallow-dipping magnetite skarn deposit in 1944 and 1948. The outcropping deposit was mapped at a scale of 1:3,600 in 1952 (Kelley, 1952). Small-scale iron ore production totaled approximately 250,000 tons in the years 1961-1988. El Capitan Precious Metals, Inc. conducted a ground magnetic survey and a drill program of six shallow holes in 2002. Although only low precious metals values had been obtained from the deposit by “standard” fire assay over the years and no significant exploration had been conducted on the property, in May, 2004 El Capitan Precious Metals, Inc. submitted a few samples of magnetite iron skarn to a metallurgical laboratory in Salt Lake City, Utah. The lab separated the samples into magnetic and non-magnetic fractions and reported significant gold and platinum results on the non-magnetic fractions using their proprietary caustic fusion assay method. These results prompted a 32-sample surface sampling and assay program conducted in January of 2005. The lab reported potential ore-grade gold and platinum results on all 32 samples; this caused El Capitan Precious Metals, Inc. to undertake three stages of diamond core, open-hole rotary, and reverse circulation drilling to outline the existing 141 million tons of Measured Resource with a gold equivalent grade of 0.044 opt.
Primary Activity
Exploration Company / Junior Miner
Gold, Silver, Platinum