Altazor
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Property Type
HSE Gold Project
Size
33,300 ha
Status
Optioned to Newcrest International Pty Ltd.
Exploration Stage
Pre-drilling
Drilling permitting completed, community consultation ongoingLocation
- Northern Chile
- Mio-Pliocene age mineral belt between Salares Norte and Choquelimpie projects
- High altitudes of 4,000 to 5,200 meters ASL
- 55 km from the town of Socaire
- Near a well-maintained gravel road connecting northern Chile and Argentina and a 20 km south of 345 kV powerlines
Altazor is an HSE gold property that occupies 33,300 hectares of the Mio-Pliocene age mineral belt in northern Chile.
Mirasol believes the Chilean and Argentine sections of the Mio-Pliocene age mineral belt is highly prospective for world-class Au+Ag deposits as exemplified by the multi million-ounce discoveries by Gold Fields at Salares Norte and by Barrick Gold at Alturas.
Exploration to date has defined two quality drill target areas on the property, and Newcrest plans to complete a 2,225 m diamond drilling program when it has reached an agreement with the nearby community.
Agreement with Newcrest International
On November 21, 2017, Mirasol announced that it signed an Option and Farm-in Agreement with Newcrest International Pty Ltd., a subsidiary of Newcrest Mining Limited (Newcrest) for the Altazor project.
Newcrest has the right to acquire up to 75% of the Mirasol owned Altazor Project in multiple stages by completing at least US$10 million in exploration and either delivering a positive bankable feasibility study or spending US$100 million in feasibility expenditure.
Mirasol can then choose either retain a 25% project equity by solely fund its share of the residual feasibility and development costs or require Newcrest to finance all costs through to production and to gain 5% project equity, with Mirasol retaining 20% of the project.
If Newcrest elects to remain in the JV until the feasibility stage, it will pay Mirasol US$1.8 million in staged option payments over seven years. Click here for more information about the terms of the Agreement.
In November 2018, Newcrest exercised its option to enter the farm-in stage of the Altazor Agreement, by making a US$500,000 payment to Mirasol. Click here for more details.
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2019 - 2020 Exploration Program by Newcrest
To date, Newcrest has defined two main target areas and plans to complete a 2,225 m diamond drilling program and some additional infill CSMAT geophysics. Newcrest is consulting and negotiating an agreement with the local community before it can proceed with the planned exploration work.
2017 - 2018 Exploration Program by Newcrest
In November 2018, Newcrest and Mirasol have staked approximately 10,000 ha of new claims expanding the project by approximately 30%.
After the claim expansion, Newcrest has conducted the following exploration activities:
- Long lead time “Corescan” alteration analysis of soils and radiometric age dates,
- A 1,035 line-km ground magnetic survey, geological mapping and rock chip sampling over an area of 128 km2,
- A 2,030 sample, low detection limit soil grid covering 85.6 km2, and
- A 66.9 line-km CSAMT resistivity geophysical survey.
The results identified potentially covered extensions of the Altazor alteration system.
According to the analysis of the combined data sets collected from the exploration activities listed above, Altazor shows to be a district-scale, zoned alteration system. And the project is to be preserved at a level that could conceal HSE gold deposits beneath a “barren” steam-heated cap rocks and post-mineral cover. These geological features are similar to other multi million-ounce discoveries in the Mio-Pliocene mineral belt in Chile. For more details about these analyses and surveys, click here.
The 2017/18 exploration results show Altazor is a large areal extent of the alteration system that will require several seasons to complete a first pass evaluation. The exploration work of this season has identified multiple compelling large-scale drill targets in three principal prospects at the project. These principal prospects share similar alteration, geochemical and geophysical characteristics with the predrill target signatures of Salares Norte and other recent HSE gold discoveries.
2016 - 2017 Reconnaissance Sampling
Mirasol’s initial reconnaissance field campaign covered over 50% of the project area with:
- A total of 216 stream sediment, 395 soil (“talus/lag” material), and 933 rock chip samples have been collected, returning low-level but significantly anomalous Au, Ag, Cu, Pb, Zn and epithermal pathfinder element assays,
- Select rock chip samples of silica-alunite and vuggy silica altered breccia, and veinlets that cross cut the breccia bodies have assayed up to 562 ppb Au, and 650 ppb Ag while soil (talus/lag) samples assayed up to 18 ppb Au and 1,080 ppb Ag.
The Altazor surface results showed comparable ppb level anomalous gold assay in soils and rock chips to those recorded at the surface at the Salares Norte Project.
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