VANCOUVER, Nov. 12, 2018 /CNW/ - Mirasol Resources
Ltd (TSX-V: MRZ) (OTCPK: MRZLF) (the "Company" or "Mirasol") is
pleased to report that Newcrest International Pty Limited, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Newcrest Mining Limited (ASX:
NCM), has exercised its option to enter the Farm-in stage
of the Altazor Agreement, triggering a US$500,000 payment to Mirasol. Newcrest has
presented a budget of US$3.3 million
for this season's exploration program, including a maiden drill
program, subject to obtaining applicable permits and
permissions.
Mirasol's President and CEO, Stephen
Nano stated: "We are pleased that Newcrest has exercised the
Farm‑in option for Altazor, representing a significant step forward
for the Project. The next stage of the earn-in represents a
substantial financial investment from one of the world's largest
gold miners to advance exploration at Altazor. We look forward to
the results for the second season's work program, including the
planned maiden drill test of some of the key targets defined to
date at the project."
Highlights of Recent Activity at Altazor
- Option to Farm-in Agreement: The initial 12-month Option
stage of the Altazor Agreement has been completed with NCM
incurring exploration expenditures in excess of US$1.5 million. NCM has made a US$500,000 option payment to Mirasol, exercising
the Farm-in stage of the agreement, where it now has 4 years to
spend an additional US$8.5 million
(total US$10 million) to earn 51% of
the project (see news release November 21,
2017). NCM will be operator, managing all exploration
activities at the project, allowing Mirasol's exploration teams to
focus on new opportunities.
- 2018/19 Planned Program: NCM has presented a
budget for this year's southern hemisphere summer exploration
program at Altazor totaling approximately US$3.3 million, subject to obtaining permits and
permissions. The budget includes allocations for a planned maiden
drill program, totaling up to 4,000 m
to test a series of compelling drill targets associated with
multiple, large, very resistive (7500 to >30,000 Ohm-m)
Controlled Source Audio-Magnetotellurics (CSAMT) geophysics
anomalies at the Alunita, Sulfuros and Pirofilita prospects
identified by last year's exploration. The budget also includes
allocations to continue the surface exploration of the large
Altazor alteration system including infill and survey extensions of
the CSAMT geophysics, geological mapping, and soil and rock chip
sampling to test new areas of the Altazor alteration system. This
seasons surface exploration is anticipated to start late in the
fourth quarter of 2018.
- Environmental Studies, Drill permit and Community
Relations: NCM has commenced drill and road access permitting
to the prospects, environmental studies and the community
consultation process for the drill program. Drilling is anticipated
to commence in the second quarter of 2019, once permitting has been
completed.
- Claims extension: 2017/18 exploration results identified
potential covered extensions of the Altazor alteration system. NCM
and Mirasol have recently staked approximately 10,000 ha of new
claims expanding the project by approximately 30% to a total of 33,
230 ha.
Summary of the Altazor Project and Recent Results from the
2017/18 Exploration
NCM and Mirasol are targeting large-scale bulk mineable High
Sulfidation Epithermal (HSE) Au+Ag deposits at Altazor, of the
style recently discovered elsewhere in the Mio-Pliocene Mineral
Belt of Chile by Gold Fields at
Salares Norte (currently under feasibility study)1 and
by Barrick Gold at the
Alturas2 project.
Altazor has favorable logistics, situated just 20 km south of
345 kV powerlines that follow International Highway Route 23, a
paved road connecting northern Chile and Argentina, a potentially significant
logistical advantage if a discovery were to be made at the project.
In common with other Mio-Pliocene mines and projects in
Chile and Argentina, Altazor is located at high
altitudes of between 4,000 and 5,200
m; however, Altazor has "drive up access" via an open valley
and a network of easily passable gravel tracks to the east side of
the project.
The Altazor Project is centered on a district-scale zoned
argillic to advanced argillic alteration system hosted by a dacitic
to andesitic volcanic complex, that is crosscut by multiphase,
strongly altered phreatic and hydrothermal breccia systems. A large
proportion of the Altazor project is capped by laterally extensive,
but relatively thin, unaltered post mineral volcanics, that conceal
the full dimensions of the alteration and breccia system.
All results from last season's exploration program have been
received. This includes long lead time "Corescan"3
alteration analysis of soils and radiometric age dates as well as
results from a 1,035 line-km ground magnetic survey, geological
mapping and rock chip sampling over an area of 128 sq. km, a 2,030
sample, low detection limit soil grid covering 85.6 sq. km, and a
66.9 line-km CSAMT resistivity geophysical survey.
Integrated analysis of the combined data sets shows Altazor to
be a district-scale, zoned alteration system, preserved at a level
that could conceal HSE gold deposits beneath a "barren" steam
heated cap rocks and post mineral cover, as has been the case at
recent multimillion ounce discoveries elsewhere in the Mio-Pliocene
mineral belt in Chile.
NCM and Mirasol have received results from three K-Ar alunite alteration age dates from
Altazor that range between 7.3 to 7.8Ma. An additional K-Ar age
determination on biotite for the post mineral volcanics has
returned a younger age of 5.8Ma. The alteration ages for Altazor
fall within the key mineralization window of 6.2 to 13.1 Ma that
"brackets" the formation of the giant Mio-Pliocene age HSE gold
deposits in the El Indio Belt (EIB) of Chile and Argentina. Bracketing of the Altazor
alteration age within the EIB mineralization ages confirms the
Altazor system formed during this key period for gold deposit
formation and as such, may have the potential of being a productive
precious metal system.
Alteration and breccias outcrop intermittently along a 15 km
long NE-oriented range front that is interpreted as a series of
large fault scarps. The 207 sq km ground magnetic survey completed
over the project, shows a series of large magnetic depletion zones,
correlating with the mapped areas of alteration, that are separated
by the magnetically distinct post alteration volcanics (Figure 1).
It is interpreted that the post alteration volcanics partially
"mask" the magnetic depletion signature of the underlying
alteration, suggesting the Altazor system may cover a much larger
area and be open to the south into the new claims recently staked
by the NCM and Mirasol.
Au+Ag mineralization in HSE deposits is invariably associated
with bodies of intense silicification and brecciation (for further
information about HSE gold deposits click here). CSAMT geophysics
has been successfully used in recent significant HSE gold
discoveries as an exploration methodology to target concealed high
intensity resistivity anomalies, that subsequent drill testing
confirmed to be vuggy silica and silicified breccia bodies hosting
gold mineralization at these projects. At Altazor, in the central
part of the alteration system, 66.9 line-km of CSAMT was surveyed
on 400 and 800 m line spacing and
delineated a series of concealed and predominantly open ended,
intense resistivity highs (7,500 to >30,000 Ohm-m) anomalies at
the Alunita, Sulfuros and Pirofilita prospects.
Geochemistry from 2,030 soil samples collected on an 85.6 sq. km
soil grid using low, ppb detection limit, four acid digest,
multielement analysis show subtle element patterns in
"geochemically barren" steam heated and advanced argillic altered
cap rock (Figure 2). Integrated analysis of this data has mapped
low, ppb level Au (peak assay 131 ppb) with strongly anomalous
Ag+Sb+Te+As that vector toward the SW into an area of concealed
high intensity CSAMT resistivity anomalies at the Alunita and
Sulfuros prospects. The Pirofilita prospect is characterized by
soils that are strongly anomalous in Ag (local peak values of up to
22.3 and 54 ppm) and Sb, with low level Au, spatially coincident
with outcropping intensely silicified breccias and concealed,
highly resistive CSAMT anomalies.
Systematic analysis of all soil samples with Corescan provided a
powerful additional dataset that was used to map district-scale
zonation in alteration mineral assemblages and was combined with
the soil geochemical analysis to map spatial variation in indicator
element ratios in alunite chemistry (Alunite Geochemical
Vectors).
Alteration mineral assemblages and alunite geochemistry that
emerged from this analysis are important new methodologies for
exploring in large high-level alteration systems to target covered
mineralization bodies. At Altazor these results vector to the SW,
corroborating the soil geochemistry vectors and further
highlighting the concealed CSAMT resistivity anomalies as priority
drill targets (Figure 3).
The 2017/18 Altazor exploration results highlight the large
areal extent of the alteration system at the project that will
require several seasons to complete a first pass evaluation. The
integrated leading-edge technologies applied during the first
season's exploration, have identified multiple compelling
large-scale drill targets in three principal prospects that have
alteration, geochemical and geophysical characteristics in common
with the predrill target signatures of Salares Norte (Table 1) and
other recent HSE gold discoveries.
Analysis of the Altazor data sets outlines alteration mineral
composition variation and low detection limit soil geochemistry
anomalies, highlighting predictive patterns that vector towards a
series of covered and predominantly open-ended, very resistive
(7,500 to >30,000 Ohm-m) CSAMT geophysical anomalies at the
Alunita, Sulfuros and Pirofilita prospects (Figure 4). These
anomalies define large-scale targets that have the form, dimensions
and intensity of resistivity response that could indicate a series
of silicified breccia and or vuggy silica bodies. The association
of Altazor mineral chemistry and soil geochemistry vectors, and
CSAMT resistivity anomalies define a series of high priority
conceptual targets for large scale HSE gold
mineralization4, that will be the focus of the planned
2018/2019 maiden drill campaign.
Mirasol will update its shareholders of progress as exploration
advances at the Altazor project.
Stephen Nano, President and CEO
of Mirasol, has approved the technical content of this news
release. Mr Nano is a Chartered Professional geologist and Fellow
of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (CP and
FAusIMM) and is a Qualified Person under NI 43 -101.
___________________________________
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1 Gold
Fields. (2017). Integrated Annual Report 2017.
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2 Barrick
Gold Corporation. (2017). Annual Report
2017.
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3 Corescan's Hyperspectral Imager
integrates high resolution reflectance spectroscopy (0.5mm), visual
imagery (0.05mm) to map mineralogy and mineral
chemistry.
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4 Azevedo,
F., Brewer, N., Santos, A., Huete Verdugo, D., Baumgartner, R.,
Roncal, L., Trueman, A. & Foley, A. (2015). The discovery
and geology of the Salares Norte epithermal gold-silver deposit,
northern Chile. In NewGenGold 2015 (p145-157). Perth,
Australia.
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Quality Assurance/Quality Control of the Altazor exploration
program:
All exploration on the project was supervised by Mirasol CEO
Stephen C. Nano, who is the
Qualified Person under NI 43-101.
Mirasol applies industry standard exploration sampling
methodologies and techniques. All geochemical soil, stream, rock
and drill samples are collected under the supervision of the
company's geologists in accordance with industry practice.
Geochemical assays are obtained and reported under a quality
assurance and quality control (QA/QC) program. Samples are
dispatched to an ISO 9001:2008 accredited laboratory in
Chile for analysis. Assay results
from surface rock, channel, trench, and drill core samples may be
higher, lower or similar to results obtained from surface samples
due to surficial oxidation and enrichment processes or due to
natural geological grade variations in the primary
mineralization.
Forward Looking Statements: The information in this news release
contains forward looking statements that are subject to a number of
known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may
cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in
our forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause such
differences include: changes in world commodity markets, equity
markets, costs and supply of materials relevant to the mining
industry, change in government and changes to regulations affecting
the mining industry. Forward-looking statements in this release
include statements regarding future exploration programs, operation
plans, geological interpretations, mineral tenure issues and
mineral recovery processes. Although we believe the expectations
reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, results
may vary, and we cannot guarantee future results, levels of
activity, performance or achievements. Mirasol disclaims any
obligations to update or revise any forward-looking statements
whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise,
except as may be required by applicable law.
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services
Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX
Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or
accuracy of this release.
SOURCE Mirasol Resources Ltd.