Titan Minerals (ASX: TTM) announced this morning that it has been reinstated by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Mines as owner of the of the Jerusalén Concession (Jerusalem Gold Project).
The Jerusalem project is an excellent addition to TTM’s existing resource base.
The new Project has an existing foreign resource estimation of 1.28Moz gold averaging 14.5g/t and 8.6Moz silver averaging 98g/t.
While not a JORC compliant resource, the company believes that the Foreign Estimate is sufficiently reliable with estimation methodologies and data compilation work acceptable for methodologies used at the time of their estimation to provide the basis for a decision to deem the property to have merit for further exploration expenditure, but is not of a quality to underpin any economic reviews.
On this note, Titan confirmed that the categories of the mineralisation reported under NI 43-101 are similar to the JORC Code (2012) classifications and Titan considers the Foreign Estimate to be material to Titan, providing a basis to contribute funding for continued exploration activity and advancement of Jerusalem through additional desktop studies for the purpose of data validation and ranking of targets within the project area.
Prior to today’s news, TTM already had a 2.1Moz resource, averaging 4.5 g/tonne gold resource inventory at its Dynasty Project. With today’s addition, its resource base has jumped 64%.
Importantly, this is not an acquisition by TTM. The project has been reinstated to the company, meaning there is no dilution of equity.
Also of note is that this project is located on trend between the Fruta del Norte deposit, just 40km to the north and the contiguous land holding of Luminex Resources’ Condor Project.
Fruta del Norte, operated by the $2.4 billion capped Lundin Gold (TSX: LUG), is a world-class producing gold mine and holds the most valuable greenfields gold discovery of the last 15 years.
Luminex Resources’ Condor project to the south hosts a 5 million ounce resource.
The new project consists of numerous high grade targets that have been identified, but are yet to be explored. Furthermore, the system remains open to the north and at depth.
The Jerusalem concession was formally validated and registered late last week, finally ratifying a succession of developments that occurred when the area was the subject of artisanal mining, during which time the government declared a force majeure.
The Jerusalem Project is the perfect complement to TTM’s flagship Dynasty Gold Project in Ecuador, where the company is focused on expanding the existing 2.1 million ounce Foreign Resource Estimate averaging 4.5 g/tonne gold, into a much bigger JORC resource by the end of the year.
The company commenced a significant drilling campaign in Q3 2020 to do this.
Furthermore assay results in July for diamond drilling completed at the Dynasty Gold Project, support an emerging large-scale gold system and extend known mineralisation that remains open in multiple directions and at depth.
The flagship Dynasty Gold Project is located in the underexplored Loja Province of Ecuador.
Dynasty is close to existing infrastructure, has strong local support and the company is fully permitted to begin work here.
Titan has two other projects of note: the Copper Duke Project, a multi-phase, outcropping, gold rich porphyry copper project, exhibiting several encouraging characteristics and the Linderos gold project, where a recent high-grade gold discovery was made.
The three projects can be seen on the following map with both Dynasty and Copper Duke lying to the west of the Jerusalem project.
Titan has continued to grow in stature this year, reaching a high of 17 cents from just 4.8 cents back in April.
While the company is now back at 13.5 cents, the addition of the Jersualem Project should act as a further catalyst for the company providing even more newsflow as we roll through the last months of 2020.
