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ReGIonAL RoUnDUP

Tesoro gold hunt in Chile

n an area largely known for hosting big eralised, with gold mineralisation starting news flow.”
IIOCG deposits, Tesoro Resources Ltd is from surface and continuing to a depth of With some suggestions that gold could
having some success identifying gold at 200m at El Zorro. reach $US2,000/oz in the near future,
El Zorro in Chile’s coastal Cordillera. Gold mineralisation is open in multiple emerging gold stories with a path to pro-
Although there is evidence of porphy- directions along a strike length in excess duction could be on the receiving end of
ry-related epithermal gold mineralisation of 4km and 2km-wide, with significant due attention from investors.
about 60km to the north-east of El Zorro, near-surface mineralisation determined Tesoro’s projects are just 10km from
it is mainly associated with copper. by intercepts in the ilk of 98m @ 1.58 g/t the Pan America Highway and near
“El Zorro is quite unique in the fact that gold. Chile’s mining town of Copiapo, while
it is only gold, there are no base metals Highlights from previous drilling also there is a port about 55km away.
at all in it,” Tesoro managing director Zeff include 84.3m @ 1.3 g/t gold (including Having infrastructure to work with
Reeves told Paydirt. 4m @ 8.5 g/t), 98.3m @ 1.58 g/t (includ- means there will be cost advantages in
Tesoro, formerly Plukka Ltd, relisted ing 30.3m @ 3.03 g/t and 11m @ 4.7 g/t) capex when the time comes for Tesoro
on the ASX in early February after rais- and 58.8m @ 1.7 g/t (including 20.3m @ to consider building a mine.
ing $4.63 million. 4.5 g/t and 6.7m @ 12.21 g/t). In the meantime, delivering good ex-
El Zorro, where Coquetas is being Reeves said the “ease” of working in ploration results will be key for Tesoro.
drilled, is the flagship in a portfolio also Chile, meant Tesoro could quickly gener- “We’ll always weigh up the options, ob-
hosting the Espina gold project. ate some momentum in the market from viously if we think we can get 1 moz out
“The style of deposit certainly hasn’t El Zorro and expected to receive assays of it for example we’d probably keep drill-
been described in Chile before, so we from drilling by late March/early April or ing up to 1 moz,” Reeves said.
have our guys on the ground looking at even sooner. “Alternatively, if the resource is there to
some other areas showing similar char- Meanwhile, results from 2,200 outcrop start pushing along into feasibility stud-
acteristics to [potentially] pick up some and rock chip samples subject to as- ies and get something built reasonably
more ground,” Reeves said. saying are also expected sometime in quickly [we can]. They are all good prob-
“With 50-100m intersects, we have a March. lems to hopefully have in the future. If
very good handle on the geology now “That will keep plenty of market inter- we are still drilling and the deposit is still
and what’s controlling the mineralisation. est in the company I think at El Zorro. We open, then we would probably continue
If we get similar results, we’ll certainly have also got early-stage work ongoing to grow it into quite a significant deposit.
be able to fast-track the resource and at Espina [maiden drilling planned for There is certainly enough gold in that dis-
could be aiming for somewhere around 2020]. But, from the point of view of get- trict from what we have done to suggest
the middle of the year, dependent on re- ting the market’s attention, this is some- there could be a significant gold resource
sults.” thing new, it is not a re-hashed WA gold- to come out of Coquetas initially and then
Immediately upon re-listing Tesoro fields play,” Reeves said. some of the other targets as well.”
was following up on a 16-hole diamond “We are not chasing geochem anoma- – Mark Andrews
drilling campaign at Coquetas with a fur- lies on a map or geophysics anomalies,
ther 10 holes. we know where the gold is, we think we
While Tesoro brings a fresh story to are onto a significant size system. There
the ASX, a total of $3 million on early is potentially a resource there already,
exploration work had been spent on El it is just a matter of getting a resource
Zorro three years prior. ready and expanding and defining it to
The company has been able to garner move it into this next stage of develop-
from previous work that all holes are min- ment and with that goes good steady

Zeff Reeves is in familiar territory in Chile with Tesoro Resources.
Reeves is managing director of Tesoro, with John Toll as chairman
and Geoffrey McNamara non-executive director

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