Los Cerros Limited (ASX: LCL) has revealed a new, developing porphyry target within the 100% owned Quinchia Gold Project in Colombia – a cluster of porphyry targets surrounding the Miraflores Gold Deposit which includes the Tesorito surface porphyry and the porphyry targets at Chuscal.
Managing Director, Jason Stirbinskis, said that with significant funding in place and three diamond drill rigs continuously drilling, the company has experienced considerable exploration success of late.
Whilst much of the attention has been on the Tesorito and Chuscal areas, Los Cerros has also been running a prospect generation programme seeking early-stage targets to add to the existing robust prospect pipeline. One such early-stage prospect (named Ceibal) has generated significant momentum to warrant its escalation as a new 2021 drill target.
Ceibal is a substantial 800m x 600m gold, copper and molybdenum near-circular surface soil1 and rock chip geochemistry anomaly (no artisanal workings are present) on the shoulder of a geophysics magnetic anomaly, 1.0km south and southwest of Miraflores and Tesorito respectively.
The Ceibal surface geochemical anomaly is broadly comparable is size and tenor to Tesorito and, like Tesorito, Ceibal is located within the Marmato Fault Corridor at a structural dilation or “jog”.
A field programme launched last year logged outcrops and float of andesites and diorites similar to those encountered at Tesorito. Rock chips have reported very high values for porphyry pathfinders such as molybdenum and copper including one sample of 2.95g/t Au, 776ppm Cu and 273ppm Mo.
Trenching across the anomalous zone is underway with results of the channel samples from the first line (broken into sections due to access issues) reporting 75m @ 1.2g/t Au and 25m @ 1.2g/t Au.
Mr Stirbinskis said most discoveries, and almost all major, multi-million ounce gold discoveries of the mid-Cauca porphyry belt of Colombia, have links to regional N-S trending faults. These are deep, major tectonic faults running the length of South America and caused by the ocean plates colliding with continental South America. Tesorito, Miraflores, Chuscal and Ceibal are all within, or very close to, the Marmato Fault Corridor, one such fault set that extends north from Quinchia to the 4Moz Marmato gold mine.
Major gold-copper deposits occur where NW-NNW trending secondary faults branch from the N-S trending fault forming dilation zones. As can be seen in Figure 2, NW-NNW secondary faults cross each of the Company’s zones of interest at Quinchia including Tesorito, Chuscal and Ceibal and also targets further north.
Bends or ‘jogs’ in fault structures tend to create openings or weaknesses where plumes of gold/copper rich magma can push upward and create today’s porphyry targets. Note Ceibal and Tesorito both sit on a bend in the Marmato Fault Corridor.
If a structural geologist was asked to place a pin on where to look for a porphyry, there’s a good probability that pin would sit over Ceiba,” Mr Stirbinskis said.
“That, along with compelling lithological, geophysical and surface geochemical results so far, is why we’ve advanced Ceibal to ‘established target’ with intentions to fast track to ‘drill ready’ and to ‘drill testing’ this year. The Quinchia cluster of targets is growing to be another important ‘hot spot’ along the mid-Cauca porphyry belt.
“We are particularly pleased that Ceibal, like Tesorito, is a virgin discovery, revealed through fundamental mapping and surface sampling by the Company’s geology team following up two separate anomalous stream samples. We also note that geological mapping and prospecting has yet to be conducted over the entire Quinchia Gold Project area.”
