Australian mining company Tesoro Gold (ASX:TSO) reports it has confirmed a new gold discovery at the Calderillas Target, located within the El Zorro Project in Chile.
The company says this discovery was confirmed through first pass scout drilling at the Calderillas Target and a step-out drillhole completed at the Ternera gold deposit located 5km to the south of Calderillas. It also notes all holes drilled returned ‘significant’ intercepts of gold mineralisation.
Tesoro Managing Director Zeff Reeves says: “The first drill results from the initial scout holes at Calderillas are extremely encouraging, demonstrating that the gold system at El Zorro is large scale and has high potential for additional deposits to be found on our concessions.
“This new discovery combined with an additional 300m of strike added to the Ternera Gold Deposit bodes well for significant resource growth in the near term with continued drilling”
This new discovery combined with an additional 300m of strike added to the Ternera Gold Deposit bodes well for significant resource growth in the near term with continued drilling. El Zorro is really shaping up as a significant gold system in a world-class location.”
Tesoro reports holes ZDDH0308 and ZDD0310 were drilled as initial scout holes to drill test the 2.5km long by 0.5km wide zone of outcropping gold mineralisation previously discovered in September.
The holes were drilled around 1.35km apart testing the western and eastern end of the surface mineralised zone. Gold mineralisation identified at Calderillas is interpreted to be strongly controlled by the presence of a north-northwest fault system crossing the El Zorro tonalite dykes which is the main gold host lithology at El Zorro.
Both holes targeted the down-dip projections of surface mineralisation hosted within the fault zones and returned positive results at the targeting areas.
Tesoro reports at Calderillas, hole ZDDH0310 is ‘encouraging’ as it returned a wide interval of 21m with gold grades of up to 3.92g/t Au contained within a medium to coarse grained sedimentary unit, highlighting the potential of additional prospective host rocks at El Zorro.
Hole ZDDH0310 returned 21m @ 0.55g/t Au from 128m including 7.2m @ 1.43g/t Au from 141m and 1.7m @ 3.92g/t Au from 147.3m.
As initial scout holes on a new target, the company considers these results ‘encouraging’ as they highlight the potential of El Zorro to contain additional gold deposits. Calderillas occurs around 5km north of Ternera with the Kitsune target potentially linking the 2 areas, where widespread outcropping gold occurrences having been identified.
The company plans to undertake additional drilling at Calderillas and initial drilling at Kitsune in the coming months.
At Ternera, Tesoro drilled step-out hole ZDDH0311 a further 60m to the south of the recently announced ZDDH0309 which returned a near surface intercept of 53.5m @ 1.17g/t Au from 57m including 13.5m @ 3.63g/t Au from 70.5m.
This hole targeted the same fault zone as ZDDH0309 and confirmed the continuation of gold mineralisation a further 60m to the south of the Ternera Gold Deposit.
Interpretation suggests that ZDDH0311 intercepted the periphery of the main controlling fault resulting in less ‘well-developed’ gold mineralisation being encountered.
The company states the hole has extended the Ternera Gold Deposit to over 260m of the existing resource area and remains open to the south. Additional drilling is planned to continue to expand the deposit and also infill to delineate further mineral resources.
Tesoro Gold is an Australia gold exploration company operating in Chile. Its focus is the El Zorro Gold Project, which covers 555km-square in the Atacama region of Chile around 800km north of Santiago and 140km by road to Copiago.
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