4th Apr 2014 10:14
LONDON (Alliance News) - Herencia Resources PLC Friday said drilling at its Picachos copper project in central Chile is due to start in approximately four weeks, after awarding the contract to Major Drilling Group International Inc.
Shares in Herencia Resources were trading 8.5% higher Friday morning at 0.499 pence per share.
The Chile-focused mineral exploration and development company said it awarded the drilling contract to Major Drilling, a Canadian contractor which has completed the majority of drilling for all of its projects. It said the contract is to drill approximately 3,000 metres to 4,000 metres of shallow reverse-circulation drilling.
The group said several high-quality drill targets have been identified following a comprehensive structural mapping exercise at Picachos, and it will target those areas in the upcoming drill programme.
The goal of the drill programme is to identify zones of mineralisation that would potentially underpin a larger-scale and long-life open pit copper mining project at Picachos.
Herencia said that at its Paguanta project, also in Chile, the environmental permitting process for a drill programme has been temporarily delayed, due to processing issues by a local government, but said that it is confident in the problem being rectified shortly.
"Given that a development decision at Paguanta will be taken at a time that coincides with future strengthening of the zinc price, we see it as beneficial to comprehensively reach agreement with stakeholders now, whilst zinc prices are at current levels," the company said in a statement.
Herencia said that work has progressed at a steady pace at its Guanange project, where Australia's OZ Minerals Ltd are funding an earn-in joint venture. The joint venture is targeting a large iron oxide copper-gold system.
The group said that early work is proving to be encouraging based on initial geological mapping and detailed geophysical surveys, and a compilation of recently acquired data is underway.
Earlier this week, Herencia said said it had not been impacted by the earthquake in northern Chile, with no damage reported at any of its projects.
By Rowena Harris-Doughty; [email protected]; @rharrisdoughty
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