LATIN AMERICA SPECIAL — Placer Dome advances Latin American

Ongoing exploration by Placer Dome (TSE) is enhancing the potential of the company’s 70% owned Las Cristinas gold project in Venezuela’s Kilometre 88 district.

“We are still drilling at Las Cristinas and have found some higher-grade areas which are likely to improve the economics of the project,” said William Threlkeld, manager, Placer Dome Exploration West.

The company is completing a feasibility study for the Conductora deposit (which includes Cuatro Muertos). But Placer Dome has continued to look at other targets on the property, with the first priority being targets that conflict with the infrastructure proposed for its mine plan. “The condemnation drilling has been turning up more ore,” Threlkeld said at a Toronto press conference. “We are targeting the Cordova/Achilles zone, the Potaso zone and the Hoffman zone.”

All these targets are smaller than Conductora, but may have higher grade. Threlkeld said recent results from five holes at Cordova/Achilles contain multiple intersections of high-grade gold. Some examples are 29.5 ft. of 0.146 oz. per ton and 19.7 ft. of 0.178 oz.

Threlkeld also hinted that a new style of mineralization was found near the Potaso target; it is younger in age, exotic, oxidized and possibly represents an enriched zone.

A number of targets remain to be tested on the property. A strategy that has met with success is to drill the bedrock under old pits worked by garimpieros, and then trace the mineralization to surface.

Meanwhile, Placer Dome expects to soon have rights to mine copper at Las Cristinas, an important factor, as most of the gold will show up in copper concentrate.

Exploration is also continuing at the Mulatos gold project in Mexico, as well as on more recently discovered satellite deposits in the Sierra Madre region. Placer Dome has presented the results of a preliminary economic study for Mulatos to its 30% joint-venture partner. To date, the company’s share of the current resource amounts to 1.9 million oz. Mulatos is a heap-leachable deposit; however, the mineralization is refractory.

In Costa Rica, the company has drilled 32 holes on its Cerro Crucitas gold project, a volcanic-hosted epithermal gold target. The company says the tropical weathering of clay-altered, volcanic rock leads to little exposure in the area and to severely oxidized gold-bearing targets. A preliminary resource is expected by year-end.

Placer opened an exploration office in Lima, Peru, last year to manage work on the Jehuamarca and Canariaco prospects and to generate new opportunities. Two targets are being investigated at Jehuamarca, both of which are epithermal polymetallic zones where sulphide concentrations of gold, copper and other metals are hosted by breccia and veins. Canariaco contains two porphyry copper-gold showings. Drill programs are planned for this year. In Argentina, Placer Dome is evaluating the Cerro Atajo project, situated in the same district and on trend with Bajo de la Alumbrera. “The property is not as deeply eroded as Alumbrera,” Threlkeld says. “Potential is for a gold-only target above a porphyry copper-gold target.” Work this year will involve at least 26,000 ft. of drilling.

Early stage exploration is taking place on prospects in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Brazil.

Elsewhere in the world, exploration offices were opened up in Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea and in Jakarta in Indonesia, where the Pangkut gold prospect is being investigated. Central Asia and the Russian Far East are new areas where exploration efforts are being expanded.