Projects
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Salamanca & Zamora Gold Exploration
Location: Salamanca and Zamora Provinces, Castilla y Leon Region, Western Spain, approximately 70 km west of the city of Salamanca and 350 km west-north west of Madrid.
Ownership: Ormonde has earned a 90% interest in nine investigation permits in Salamanca Province, totalling approximately 360 sq kilometres through a joint venture with Siemcalsa (10%), a regional, partially state-funded company. These permits are held by Saloro S.L., a wholly-owned Ormonde subsidiary and by Siemcalsa. Saloro also holds a 100% interest in two permits in the Zamora Province covering a total area of approximately 50 sq kilometers. All the permits are issued for an initial period of 3 years, renewable for further periods of 3 years upon submission of work programmes to the regional authority, the Junta de Castilla y Leon.
Ormonde considers the Salamanca-Zamora area to be one of the most prospective gold terrains in Spain and is targeting gold mineralisation associated with granites intruded into a variable sequence of meta-sediments. The permits cover mineral prospects and occurrences with potential for high-grade vein-hosted and large, bulk tonnage low-grade deposits.
Drilling has been carried out on the most advanced targets in the permit area, which has successfully intersected gold mineralisation.
Current Status: Follow up drilling on multiple vein target defined by previous drilling.
Drilling has been carried out on the Pino de Oro gold prospect in the Zamora Province, where previous drilling by Spanish government agencies in the 1990s intersected high-grade gold mineralisation, with better intersections including 1.0m grading 65.8 g/t and 10.7m grading 3.7 g/t gold on the El Facho and La Solana structures. Drilling by Ormonde in 2007 confirmed the previous government drilling with intersections including 1.0m grading 18.9 g/t, 1.0m grading 16.6 g/t and 3.0m grading 4.3 g/t gold. The results of Ormonde's drilling programme were reported in August 2007 (see press release for details and table of results). All drilling to-date has defined mineralisation over a strike length of 500 metres varying in width from 1m to 11m with grades ranging from 1.6g/t to 66g/t. This is considered a very prospective target and this, coupled with some positive initial gold metallurgical testwork and presence of several other untested structures, will ensure that Pino de Oro will be the priority for Ormonde's gold exploration programmes.
Current Status: Initial drilling on targets defined by geological and geochemical field work.
The first drilling and trenching on a new prospect termed “Sierro” on Ormonde’s Salamanca Gold Project in Western Spain has returned very encouraging wide gold intersections in a sheeted vein system.
The Company identified its ground holdings in Salamanca as having potential to host large, granite-related gold systems and Sierro has all the characteristics of such a system.
- The first hole on Sierro, drilled on a gold-in-soil geochemical anomaly some 800m long by 400m wide, returned gold over a 62 metre interval averaging 0.5 g/t, within a newly-defined sheeted vein system;
- A trench excavated across the part of the anomaly tested by this drillhole returned 25 metres grading 1.0 g/t gold within a broad zone of 57 metres averaging 0.7 g/t gold;
- Gold occurs as continuous mineralisation within wide zones of sheeted quartz veining of a broadly similar nature to the extensive systems hosting large, low-grade, granite-related gold deposits.
These thick gold intersections are deemed by the Company to be extremely encouraging; neither the trench nor the drillhole established the boundaries of the mineralised system and further drilling will be carried out to establish the extent and average grade of this system. The style of sheeted quartz veining with an associated Ag-As-Bi-Sb geochemical signature and the considerable thickness of the gold mineralisation, are broadly similar to that seen in certain large tonnage gold deposits in other parts of the world (these include Dublin Gulch with a grade of 0.9 g/t gold – under evaluation; and Fort Knox with a grade of 0.8 g/t gold – in production, both in North America).
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