RT Minerals Corp. ("RTM"/ the "Company") announces that the Company has secured the exclusive exploration rights to the Tiger River, Konawaruk and Demerara River gold properties, Guyana, South America.
These properties lie within the regional Makapa-Issano belt which is part of a larger gold bearing system within the Guiana Shield that trends from Venezuela to French Guiana. The overall area of the Makapa-Issano trend, inside Guyana, has historically produced over 1 million ozs of alluvial gold (source: Guyana Geology and Mines Commission ("GGMC")) as well as covers the past producing Omai gold deposit (3.7 million ozs produced) located 40km to the northeast of these RTM property acquisitions. In addition, the Eagle Mountain deposit (750,000 ozs Au- Gold Source Mines Inc.) and RTM's Mahdia property lease are located approximately 9km to the north west of the Tiger River, Konawaruk and Demerara River properties.
TIGER RIVER GOLD PROPERTY, GUYANA
The Tiger River property is located approximately three hours' driving time south west of Georgetown, Guyana. The property consists of approximately 1200 acres and has had historical alluvial mining operations carried out on the property. The property has excellent potential for in-situ alluvial gold mineralization as well as for gold bearing alluvial tailings from past dredging (sluice systems) where, reportedly (GGMC), less than 40% gold recovery may have been realized.
RTM has the exclusive exploration rights on this property to November 30, 2014 whereupon RTM may elect to commence alluvial operations on the property by paying $10,000 USD per year and 15% of all gold produced from the alluvial operations.
KONAWARUK GOLD PROPERTY, GUYANA
The Konawaruk property is situated four hours' driving time south west of Georgetown, Guyana. The property consists of 2400 acres and has been subject to small scale past alluvial mining operations. Immediately west of this RTM property, during colonial times, alluvial dredging operations by British Guiana Mines Inc., reportedly produced over 100,000 ozs of gold (source: GGMC).
RTM has the exclusive exploration rights on this property to November 30, 2014 whereupon RTM may elect to commence alluvial operations on the property by paying $20,000 USD per year and 15% of all gold produced from the alluvial operations.
DEMERARA RIVER GOLD PROPERTY, GUYANA
The Demerara River property is located approximately four hours' driving time south west of Georgetown, Guyana. The property is approximately 1100 acres and consists of 39 land and 12 water claims. The property has had small scale alluvial mining operations intermittently active since 1994.
The Demerara River property covers part of the Roraima sedimentary package. The Roraima sedimentary package is similar to the host sedimentary unit of Witwatersrand, South Africa.
A field program consisting of trenching, pits, banka drilling, sampling, assaying and analysis of the gold characteristics is recommended.
RTM has the exclusive exploration rights on this property to November 30, 2014 whereupon RTM may elect to commence alluvial operations on the property by paying $20,000 USD per month from such operations.
GUYANA ALLUVIAL MINING
In Guyana, the main method of mining alluvial gold is, and has been, by using wooden or metal sluices normally 5 to 20ft long by 2 to 8ft wide accompanied by 4" or 6" dredges consisting of small engines with water and gravel sections. These are not high recovery systems. Studies completed by the GGMC over the past several years have reportedly averaged the recovery rate of these sluice systems at generally between 30% to 40%. In addition, sluices generally only recover gold above 100 mesh in an effective manner. Below 100 mesh the recovery rates for gold can fall below 5%.
In recent years, a few larger alluvial mining operators have implemented wash plants and concentrators (sepro/icon systems) and these have shown to improve recovery rates up to 85%. With these systems much more of the finer gold content of - 200 mesh can be recovered.
Wash plants are more expensive as a capital cost, as well as to prepare for onsite alluvial mining, but they are far more efficient with their higher recovery rates. Also, less labor is required as the entire system is substantially more mechanized. These modern state of the art wash plants, and / or Knelson concentrator systems and flow sheet designs, enable alluvial mining of up to 20 hours per a day per plant compared to 10 hours per day which is more common for a traditional dredge or sluice system.
MAHDIA GOLD PROPERTY, GUYANA
Finally, RTM announces that the Phase One surface alluvial (saprolite) exploration program announced by the Company on May 14, 2014 has been postponed due to adverse weather conditions that have left the principal access road unavailable for continuous safe access and egress from the Mahdia gold property. It is expected that access to the Mahdia property will be reinstated within the next 30 to 60 days. RTM has advised the vendor of the Force Majeure conditions at Mahdia and has requested an extension to complete Phase 1 work and property payments to September 30, 2014.
CURRENT WORK PROGRAM DEMERARA GOLD PROPERTY, GUYANA
During the next 30 days RTM will carry out a field program on the Demerara River property consisting of pit excavation, trenching, shallow Banka drilling, sampling and assaying. This program is estimated to cost $80,000 USD. The location of this property has not been affected by the heavy rains experienced in certain parts of Guyana over the past month.
QUALITY CONTROL
Mr. Robert Laakso, P.Eng., is the Independent Qualified Person who has prepared or supervised the preparation of the information that forms the basis for the scientific and technical disclosure in this news release.
Source: http://www.rtmcorp.com/