LONDON, ENGLAND — (Marketwired) — 09/09/13 — („Condor– or „the Company“) (AIM: CNR), a gold exploration company focused on delineating a large commercial reserve on its 100%-owned La India Project in Nicaragua, which hosts a CIM compliant Mineral Resource of 2.4 Million oz gold at 4.6g/t, is pleased to announce the completion of a 23,598m drilling programme on La India Project. The total drilled by Condor and previous explorers on La India Project now stands at 61,800m. When all assay results have been returned mineral resource updates, with an emphasis on defining open pit resources will be completed on the La India and America Vein Sets, and a maiden mineral resource will be estimated for the Central Breccia Prospect.
Highlights
Mark Child, Chairman and CEO commented:
„Condor has completed a 23,598m drilling programme on La India Project since November 2012, bringing the total drilled by Condor to 43,697m and by Condor and previous explorers to 61,800m. Infill drilling from the recently completed 13,465m, brings the total drilled to 33,954m within La India Open Pit area. The results show continuity of gold mineralization and grade. Drilling within the high grade ore shoots returned some of the best intercepts to date. See tables 1 and 2 below.
The focus of the recent drilling has been to prove over 1M oz gold in the Indicated category in high grade open pit resources, while maintaining circa 200,000 oz gold in the Indicated category in underground resources in preparation for a Pre-Feasibility Study („PFS“). A resource update for La India Project is scheduled to be completed by SRK Consulting (UK) Ltd by the end of October 2013.“
Since the last gold mineral resource update was announced in September 2012 Condor has completed over 162 drill holes for 23,598m of drilling on the Company-s flagship La India Project. The total drilled by Condor and previous explorers on La India Project now stands at 61,800m. The majority of the recent drilling has been infill drilling on the La India Open Pit area designed to convert potentially open-pittable Inferred resource ounces to the more confident Indicated category. Smaller exploration drilling programmes have also been completed on the America Vein Set and Central Breccia Prospect designed to test for open pit potential and increase the overall size of the gold resource at La India Project. Since the drilling campaign started in November 2012 a total of 162 drill holes for 23,598m drilling has been completed with up to 5 drilling rigs working simultaneously: 21,558m of diamond core has been collected, the balance being RC drilling. All drilling rigs have now been demobilised.
Assay results have been received for all but two of the 85 holes drilled on La India and all of those drilled on America and the Central Breccia. The best intercepts for the recent drilling programme are listed in Tables 2 and 4 below, whereas Tables 1 and 3 and 5 show the best intercepts of all drilling to date by Condor and previous explorers on each of the prospect areas.
True width is based on the current interpretation of the veins and may be revised in the future. Top ten intercepts ranked by grade multiplied by true width.
True width is based on the current interpretation of the veins and may be revised in the future. Top twenty intercepts ranked by grade multiplied by true width.
True width is based on the current interpretation of the veins and may be revised in the future. Top six intercepts ranked by grade multiplied by true width.
True width is based on the current interpretation of the veins and may be revised in the future. Top five intercepts ranked by grade multiplied by true width.
La India Vein Set hosts a resource of 12Mt at 4.0g/t for 1.5 Million oz gold including an open pit resource of 8.21 million tonnes at 3.6g/t for 954,000 oz gold of which 534,000 oz gold at 3.9 g/t is in the Indicated Category and 420,000 oz gold at 3.3g/t in the Inferred Category. Of the underground resource 97,000 oz of the underground resource is Indicated with the balance Inferred. Based on the September 2012 mineral resource a Preliminary Economic Assessment (-PEA- – see announcement dated 5th March 2013) suggested that an 800k oz gold open pit was potentially feasible using a conservative assumption of 40-42 degrees pit slope angles.
Since the PEA was completed a further 85 drill holes for 13,956m of infill, and depth and strike extension drilling have been completed at 50m drill spacing which combined with underground grade control samples from the historic mine is considered sufficient to provide Indicated level of confidence in the next Mineral Resource update. In addition, 11 drill holes for 1,836m of drilling have been completed to provide geotechnical data, for a total of 96 drill holes for 15,792m. The geotechnical drilling will contribute data towards the calculation of a more accurate pit slope angle for use in an updated Whittle pit model. A report on the results of the geotechnical drilling programme will be announced in September 2013. The infill resource drilling will allow the entire open pit resource to be estimated at the more confident Indicated category required for inclusion in an open pit mining pre-feasibility study.
The 50m spaced drilling grid has been extended beyond the 800k oz gold open pit shell used in the PEA in order to accommodate a potentially larger open pit should the geotechnical study demonstrate that steeper pit walls than those assumed for the PEA are feasible, and also to accommodate potential improvements in the mineral resource as a result of the latest drilling. A Whittle Pit model, incorporating the ongoing geotechnical study, will be included in the next resource update in order to determine how much of the resource will be assigned open pit parameters. The latest drilling programme is expected to increase the Indicated resource at La India Open Pit to over 1M oz gold.
In addition to simply converting Inferred resource into the Indicated category the latest drilling programme was also designed to test for additional resource ounces by drilling along strike of a high-grade zone of gold mineralisation defined at depths of between 80m and 200m below surface at the southern end of the India-California structure where the gold mineralisation remains open and untested.
Assay results have been received for all but two of the drill holes, accounting for 15,301m of the drilling programme. Results for the latest 23 drill holes for 6,307m which have been received since the last drilling update announced in July are presented in the table below. Intercepts generally confirm the geological model used in the current Inferred mineral resource with a best intercept of 19.20m (14.7m true width) at 3.60g/t gold in the Central North high-grade shoot (drill hole LIDC308). The drilling programme includes converting lower grade zones such as the 500-550 cross-sections in the South and the 1400 cross-section in the North to the Indicated category since they fall within the influence of the open pit.
True width is an interpretation based on the current interpretation of the veins and may be revised in the future.
America Vein Set. All assay results have been returned for the 50 drill holes for 5486m drilling programme completed on the America Vein Set, which was initiated in December 2012 and completed in July this year. The America Vein Set contains 2.11Mt at 6.0g/t for 405,000 oz gold, of which 288,000 oz gold is in the interconnected America-Constancia-Escondido veins which were exploited through underground shrinkage-stopage mining between 1938 and 1956 with an estimated 40% of the total gold production from the La India Mining District, equivalent to approximately 250,000 oz gold at 13.5g/t extracted by selective mining of the high-grade core of the veins.
The drilling programme targeted remnant gold mineralisation in the wallrock of the historic mine workings with a focus on the structurally complex zone where the Constancia veins intercept a 60 degrees flexure in the America-Escondido Vein. The development of wider veins and quartz breccia zones at this structurally complex zone has resulted in some wider zones of gold mineralisation and so drilling on a 50m spacing was continued to a depth of over 300m down-dip from surface in order to better test this zone. Since the last drilling update assay results have been returned for the final 5 holes drilled on the edge and at depth on the America-Escondido flexure zone, presented in the table below.
The Central Breccia, which was discovered by Condor geologists in 2011 has been defined within a 140m by 300m area at surface and returned a best drilling intercept of 45.80m at 4.24g/t gold from exploratory drilling undertaken in 2012 (see announcement dated 28th May 2012). A further 2321m of drilling has been completed on the Central Breccia Prospect to bring the total to 2669m drilled to date. The gold mineralisation is hosted by a hydrothermal breccia system with high-grade gold mineralised zones associated with intense argillic alteration and sulphide mineralisation within a low-grade background halo. The high-grade zones are variable at a decimetre-scale which requires close spaced drilling to obtain continuity between drill samples and confidently model the gold distribution. Drilling to date has confirmed the lateral dimensions shown at surface with high-grade mineralisation intercepted up to 100m below surface. The recent drilling results listed in Table 8 below.
A Mineral Resource update for the America Vein and a maiden mineral resource on the Central Breccia are currently underway. When assay results have been returned for the final two drill holes on La India Open Pit an updated independent gold mineral resource estimation will be released once geological modelling and the ongoing geotechnical study is completed.
Figure 1. Location of the Drilling Zones within the La India Project:
Competent Person-s Declaration
The information in this announcement that relates to the mineral potential, geology, Exploration Results and database is based on information compiled by and reviewed by Dr Luc English, the Country Exploration Manager, who is a Chartered Geologist and Fellow of the Geological Society of London, and a geologist with eighteen years of experience in the exploration and definition of precious and base metal Mineral Resources. Luc English is a full-time employee of Condor Gold plc and has sufficient experience which is relevant to the style of mineralization and type of deposit under consideration, and to the type of activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Competent Person as defined in the June 2009 Edition of the AIM Note for Mining and Oil & Gas Companies. Luc English consents to the inclusion in the announcement of the matters based on their information in the form and context in which it appears and confirms that this information is accurate and not false or misleading.
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About Condor Gold plc:
Condor Gold plc is an AIM listed exploration company focused on developing gold and silver resource projects in Central America. The Company was admitted to AIM on 31st May 2006 with the stated strategy to prove up CIM/JORC Resources in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Condor has seven 100% owned concessions in La India Mining District („La India Project“); three 100% owned concessions in three other project areas and 20% in the Cerro Quiroz concession in Nicaragua. In El Salvador, Condor has 90% ownership of four licences in two project areas.
Condor-s concession holdings in Nicaragua currently contain an attributable CIM/JORC compliant resource base of 2,497,000 ounces of gold equivalent at 4.6 g/t in Nicaragua and an attributable 1,004,000 oz gold equivalent at 2.6g/t JORC compliant resource base in El Salvador. The Resource calculations are compiled by independent geologists SRK Consulting (UK) Limited for Nicaragua, and Ravensgate and Geosure for El Salvador.
Disclaimer
Neither the contents of the Company-s website nor the contents of any website accessible from hyperlinks on the Company-s website (or any other website) is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement.
Technical Glossary
Contacts: Condor Gold PLC Mark Child Executive Chairman and CEO +44 (0) 20 7408 1067
Condor Gold PLC Luc English Country Manager Nicaragua +505 8854 0753
Beaumont Cornish Limited Roland Cornish +44 (0) 20 7628 3396
Ocean Equities Limited Will Slack +44 (0) 20 7786 4385
Farm Street Media Simon Robinson +44 (0) 7593 340107
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