Condor Resources (LON:CNR) has expanded its ongoing drill programme at the La India concession, it announced. It has now hired a second rig and it plans to drill another 1,500 metres.
Originally the plan was for one rig to drill 5,000 metres. Now there will be two and the programme will total 6,500 metres.
The company emphasised that the second rig will help it to speed up resource definition and help it increase the existing JORC inferred resource of 909,000 ounce of gold.
The rig will be operated by Energold Drilling. Condor highlighted that a man portable hydraulic drill rig is being used. Such a rig can drill to depths between 300 – 35 metres. This type of rig can be broken down into units which can be carried between drill sites by a team of porters. This avoids the clear tracks and it allows access to difficult- -to-reach targets on steep sided hills.
Initially, the new rig will drill on La India’s San Lucas-Capulin Vein, which has not been drilled by previous explorers, but has been mined historically. This aim is to extend the inferred resource by drilling along strike and beneath zones where high-grade gold mineralisation has already been intercepted at surface by trenching.
In the recent JORC resource estimate the San Lucas-Capulin vein was calculated to have 34,000 ounces of gold.
"(At San Lucas-Capulin) the resource extent is only 500 metres at surface but the strike length of the vein is 1,500 metres, with several high grade trenches along strike,” said chairman Mark Child.
Child also reminded investors that the current JORC Inferred resource is calculated across 6.5 kilometres of mineralised gold veins at surface, and that a further 8 kilometres of mineralised gold veins have been identified by trenching, rock chip sampling or underground sampling.