Aug 3 2015
Arena Minerals Inc. is pleased to provide an update on exploration activities on the Company's Atacama copper project. B2Gold Corp. has informed the Company that it has mobilized a diamond drill and commenced drilling on the Atacama copper project claims under option, being the Pampa Paciencia and Cerro Barco prospects. B2Gold is focusing initially on the Pampa Paciencia target, to which the diamond drill has been mobilized.
B2Gold has completed significant surface exploration on Pampa Paciencia, including large scale and detailed mapping, trenching and sampling. The surface program was successful in identifying a number of epithermal gold and silver bearing veins up to 2.8 km in strike length. Results from the trenching include intersections of 5m of 7.7g/t Au and 162.20 g/t Ag from trench 3, and 2.7m of 2.9g/t Au and 43.00 g/t Ag, including 0.6m of 5.58 g/t Au and 83.70 g/t Ag from trench 1 which is located approximately 600m SE of trench 3.
The gold bearing veins are associated with adularia, chalcedony, sulfosalts, CuOx and crustiform-colloform textures typical of intermediate sulfidation gold-silver bearing systems that are found elsewhere in northern Chile. The geochemical signature of the gold bearing veins discovered to date at Paciencia exhibit a strong correlation of gold with Ag, Cu, Sb, Pb, Zn and lesser Ba, Mo, which is also common in other intermediate sulfidation Au-Ag systems. B2Gold has initiated a drill program designed to follow up on the favourable trench results.
Ground work has begun on Cerro Barco including mapping, sampling and additional geophysics. A large CSAMT geophysical survey was recently completed over the main part of the porphyry copper target, including the covered areas where ground magnetics carried out previously by Arena had identified a strong semi-circular anomaly. A total of 34 line km of survey was completed at 200m line spacing using a Zonge GDP-32 receiver and a Zonge GGT-30 transmitter. Initial interpretation of the field results indicate the presence of a conspicuous circular shaped structure roughly 1.2km ENE of the area containing anomalous copper values returned from previous mapping and surface sampling. Additional interpretation and final results from this survey are expected within the coming weeks but the initial interpretation is very encouraging and further work including further detailed mapping, sampling and drilling by B2 is expected to be carried out in the coming months on this exciting target.
The Company will provide further updates on exploration activities being conducted by B2Gold once such results are made available to the Company.
The technical and scientific aspects of this news release have been reviewed and approved by Mr. Vernon Arseneau, P.Geo, who is a qualified person pursuant to NI 43-101. As the Vice President of Exploration of the Company, Mr. Arseneau is not considered independent.
Source: http://www.arenaminerals.com/