Southern Silver Exploration (SSV.V) has recently completed the acquisition of the 60% stake Electrum Holdings owned in the Cerro Las Minitas project and now it has regained full ownership on the project, SSV can focus on the exploration programs again in an attempt to boost the resources and move towards a preliminary economic assessment.
Southern Silver is currently in the middle of a 10,000 meter drill program and roughly 40% of the program has already been completed. Whereas the labs are still backed up in North America, Southern Silver has been able to get the results out relatively fast and the assay results of the first two holes were published last week. Both holes were drilled on the South Skarn target which extends for over 500 meters of strike to the east of Cerro and has been drill-tested before up to a depth of 450 meters. Holes 118 and 119 were drilled closer to surface than the historical drill holes and are described by the company as ‘lateral and up-dip step-outs).
As you can see on the image above, the main interval in hole 118 was the 6.9 meters (4 meters true width) containing 109 g/t silver, 3.9% ZnPb and a little bit of copper and gold, resulting in a silver-equivalent grade of 292 g/t. A substantial portion of this interval was caused by a very high-grade but narrower interval of 0.9 meters of true thickness at 1174 g/t AgEq (which means the remaining 3.1 meters contains just around 31 g/t AgEq).
Hole 119 contains several mineralized intervals of which the 6.7 meters true width containing 1454 g/t AgEq is excellent. It’s also interesting to see the drill-bit encountered what appears to be four separate mineralized zones with silver-equivalent grades exceeding the cutoff grade. With 1.1 meters of 456 g/t AgEq, 3.2 meters of 176 g/t and 1.2 meters of 308 g/t (all true width, and all grades are AgEq), hole 119 is quite intriguing.
These are just the first two holes and Southern Silver’s 10,000 meter drill program isn’t even half completed yet so we can expect a steady stream of additional assay results over the coming months. One rig is currently drilling Mina La Bocona while the second rig continues to focus on the South Skarn target. The 10,000 meter drill program is aimed at increasing the currently known 272M ounces silver-equivalent resource by 30%.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Southern Silver. Southern Silver is a sponsor of the website. Please read our disclaimer.
