Titan Minerals (ASX:TTM) says it now hopes to eke out more than five million gold ounces at its 100 per cent-owned Dynasty gold project in southern Ecuador, significantly increasing the operation’s resource footprint in a 9km epithermal corridor.
The company’s earlier mapping and soil sampling defined several new drill targets and, tantalisingly, more than half of the system and newly-identified soil geochemical anomalies remain undrilled.
The current resource inventory at Dynasty – a project that spans five contiguous concessions covering 139 square kilometres – now stands at 3.1 million ounces of gold and 22 million ounces of silver. Titan says its latest results from pXRF analysis of soil samples have revealed multiple new epithermal gold targets, highlighted by strong and coherent arsenic anomalies within the Dynasty corridor.
Trenching of the new gold targets is slated to begin immediately, together with continued mapping along the Iguana-Trapichillo Gap Zone, so that Titan can fully understand the anomalies before drilling. Once completed, new targets will be prioritised, with resource growth drilling planned for the end of September.
Soil geochemistry from the 2km Gap Zone between Iguana to the south and Trapichillo to its north has confirmed strong arsenic anomalies, indicating the potential for further epithermal gold mineralisation. Only shallow drilling is required to define resources in the new areas and additional soil anomalies south of Iguana represent further growth potential from shallow depths.
It’s exciting and significant that our expanded soil geochemical programs and ground reconnaissance have unveiled undrilled anomalies, proving the continuity of the Dynasty epithermal vein system over the full 9km of strike. We look forward to drill testing these newly highlighted target areas, with an expectation that our current resource base could increase significantly in size. Titan Minerals CEO Melanie Leighton
To the east of Titan’s gold prospects at Dynasty, there is also considerable potential for porphyry copper mineralisation as identified by surface mapping, trenching and drilling at its Kaliman prospect and by surface geochemistry and mapping at the Cola and Gisell prospects. The company is well-advanced with its trenching activities on the Gisell copper target and results are expected next month.
The Linderos project, 10km to the south of Dynasty, is another of Titan’s Ecuadorian prospects that has recently grabbed headlines after mining giant Hancock Prospecting’s subsidiary Hanrine Ecuadorian Exploration offered the company a deal worth US$120 million (AU$182.4 million) in return for an 80 per cent interest in the copper play. The deal, which is subject to shareholder approval at a general meeting on Monday, is set for completion this month, with exploration activities including drilling to be funded by Hanrine and set to begin in late September.
Being the 100 per cent owner-operator of a multi-million-ounce, high-grade gold orebody would appear to be a smart move in the current environment – especially with the yellow metal hitting an all-time high of US$2469 (A$3671) an ounce last night. The potential, therefore, to significantly increase the resource by a further 60 per cent to five million-plus ounces feels a bit like putting the icing on top of the cake.
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