Oroco Resource Corp (OCO.V) currently has seven drill rigs actively working on the Santo Tomas project which means the field team is pulling a lot of meters out of the ground these days. This also means the company is in an excellent position to continuously release fresh drill results and just last week, Oroco released the assay results from an additional 4,100+ meters of drilling. Oroco released results from five holes drilled at the Santo Tomas North Zone for a total of 2,668 meters while it also completed two deep holes at Brasiles for a total of 1,456 meters.
Of the five holes drilled at Santo Tomas, holes 27,28, 30 and 31 were drilled to confirm the continuity of the higher grade mineralization of the North Zone along the length of the deposit for a total strike length of 1,000 meters of shallow and higher-grade mineralization. All four holes confirmed the presence of higher grade mineralization through and below the grade shell. Hole N028 for instance, which encountered 132 meters of 0.46% CuEq, further expanded the strike length of the North Zone by an additional 100 meters to the north as this new hole now marks the most northerly drill hole at the North Zone.
Hole N029 was important as it further expanded the mineralization to the west of the grade shell as this hole was designed to test the hanging wall side of the deposit. The drill bit intersected three distinct areas of mineralization with 106 meters of 0.36% copper-equivalent as the most noticeable interval.
While the company is just continuing to establish the boundaries of the copper mineralization at the North Zone, Oroco also returned to Brasiles and the results of hole B006 and B007 have now been released. After the disappointing result of hole B004 where we were expecting more, we were curious to see what the new holes would yield. Hole B007 was the best one of both with 228 meters containing 0.37% CuEq and this basically appears to be a continuation of the north zone as both the thickness and grade of the mineralization appear quite similar.
Hole B006 did not test the trend and only returned 17.9 meters of 0.35% copper-equivalent and while the grade is decent and in line with the North Zone and other Brasiles intervals, a thickness of less than 18 meters doesn’t add too much value. That being said, it is still very early days at Brasiles as Oroco has received the assay results of just seven holes. While we initially hoped Brasiles could be a higher grade zone, it is starting to look like the continuation of the North Zone with similar grades. Drilling at Brasiles has now been suspended to focus on the North and South Zone at Santo Tomas as that’s where the maiden compliant resource will be zooming in on.
Oroco Resource Corp also filed its financials for the quarter ending in August. At the end of that month, the company had a positive working capital position of approximately C$15.6M after having spent in excess of C$5M on drilling during the preceding quarter. The amount of rigs has since been expanded to seven but this will decrease again to just three or four by next month as Oroco will solely focus on the South Zone for the final phase of the drill program.
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